


A Pack a Day

by GhostlyMuse



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Canonical Character Death, Complete, F/M, Fallout, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, Nick Valentine Deserves Happiness 2k16, Other, POV Second Person, POV Third Person, Reader as Sole Survivor, Reader is not described, Reader is not gendered, Save this poor Toaster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-12 16:37:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 49,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5672917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostlyMuse/pseuds/GhostlyMuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SPOILERS FOR NICK VALENTINE'S COMPANION QUEST</p><p>Nick Valentine has a deep past, and one he doesn’t think truly belongs to him. After closing one of his hardest cases, he’s left at a loss when his existential problems continue to plague him. With justice served and nothing to distract him from his demons, he and the Sole Survivor revisit some key memories around the campfire. What separates Officer Nick Valentine from Detective Nick Valentine? Is there any difference at all?</p><p> Time to delve into our favorite Detective's past from his first memories in the Commonwealth to now and figure out what makes our clockwork gumshoe tick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Winter's Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick and the Sole Survivor have a conversation by the campfire reminiscing about the Old World.

 

_Quiet nights in the Commonwealth were a rare blessing to anyone traversing the wastes for a number of reasons. No one could sneak up on you without you knowing it first- no heavy footsteps in armor, no buzzing, insectoid clicking of bloatflies or radroaches,  no sounds of animals lumbering through the undergrowth. All there was to  you was the quiet sound of simmering coals from the dying fire and the quiet whirring noise of your travelling partner lying on the remains of a sleeping bag on the other side._

 

_“You alright Nick?” You ask, as your  eyes try to pick out familiar constellations in the sky above._

 

_At first only the near silent ‘click’ of his optics as they change position answers, but there’s the sound of shifting clothes and a low, drawn out sigh._

 

_“Kind of late to start off a conversation, don’t you think?”_

 

_You shift around to apologize, but by the time you do, he’s already sitting up with a mechanical hand raising a cigarette to his lips. The glowing rings of his eyes flick from you to the fire before he leans over and tosses another branch onto the pile that you’d gathered before._

 

_“I know, but a lot’s happened in the past couple days and-”_

 

_“And you’re worried about me after I filled old Eddie full of lead.” Nick interrupts, taking the cigarette from his mouth and holding it to the coals from the fire. “Yeah, I know how people act when they’re concerned. I’m touched, but honestly you don’t have to go worrying about an old synth like me. Putting Eddie in the ground and closing that case has never had me feeling better.”_

 

_He raises the lit cigarette to his mouth and holds it between his lips and a silence passes between you both as the smoke curls into the air._

 

_“Why do you do that?” You ask, moving a little closer to the fire._

 

_“Why do I do what?”_

 

_“Smoke.” You say in response, motioning to the smoke wafting over your way and dispersing it with a few waves of your hand. “You can’t really smoke them, can you?”_

 

_Nick gives a short chuckle, “No, not without lungs. But then again, I don’t have to deal with any of the side-effects anymore.” He points out with a slight smile. “Old habits die hard. I used to smoke a pack a day back before the war. Now it’s just a comfort, muscle-memory minus the muscle.”_

 

_ _

 

_You smile to match his before the mechanical detective’s expression neutralizes and his optics click as they avert themselves._

 

_“Well, I didn’t smoke before the war, Nick did.” He says, correcting himself, “I picked up the habit from him afterwards.”_

 

_There it was again, the same old demon raising it’s ugly head. You wonder just how long that Nick’s identity has been plaguing him. You had hoped that closing the Eddie Winter case would help him find some answers, and maybe he had too, but his problems hadn’t disappeared and instead reopened an old wound. Of course, problems like that never did go away entirely. It still broke your heart listening to the man when he’d brought you to the corner where Jenny had been gunned down, talking about how he’d lost his fiancee only to correct himself- she’d been Nick’s fiancee, not his even though it was clear he loved her just as much._

 

_You think about how much you have to love someone to still feel that way even after decades of settling down in the Commonwealth. You had to wonder if you’d feel the same way about your spouse even after so long. The pain still felt fresh in your mind, but the days of gunfire and traversing the wastes left little more than survival in your mind for the  time being. And when you weren’t being shot at, you slept. But Nick didn’t exactly have the pleasure of rest like you do, and you realize how many nights he must lie awake with his thoughts._

 

 _“That’s still_ you _though.” You venture, “They’re your memories as much as his.”_

 

_“Didn’t we go over this already?” He asks, the slight gruff of irritation in his voice._

 

_“We did, but I think you’re going about it at the wrong angle.” You respond tentatively, you’d really not want to get into a fight with Nick as it’s clear that this is a sore subject for him._

 

_“And how do you suppose?” He challenges, taking the cigarette from his mouth and tapping it (maybe a little too roughly) to free the loose ashes from the end._

 

_“Well…” You respond, grabbing a small branch from the pile of kindling. “It’s like this. It’s a metaphor, ok?” You add, seeing him quirk his brow. “This main branch here is your and Nick’s shared memories.” You explain, tapping the main portion of the stick. “But then it offshoots down here, into two separate paths.” You continue, running your fingers down to where the wood separated into a sharp ‘v’. “These separate paths are you and Nick. Same branch, same person, but at one point you split ways. They aren’t your memories, they aren’t just his either. They belong to you both.”_

 

_You shrug and toss the branch into the makeshift fire pit in an attempt to revive the flames._

 

 _“You lived the same life_ together _.” You conclude, “You just didn’t know that until you split off.”_

 

_And then came the silence again as Nick withdrew the cigarette from his mouth, holding it between the two fingers of his bare mechanical hand as he propped his arm up on a knee. He seems to space out, something you recognize after so long travelling together as his thinking face when he’s found some new information and his processor is hard at work pushing through a problem._

 

_“Well-” He says, breaking the silence, “-it’s an abstract concept for sure. But I can see your logic. I’ll try to keep it in mind.”_

 

_You feel a weight start to lift and suddenly it feels as if some of the tension has faded away. You doubt that he’s entirely accepted your way of thinking about the situation, but there’s hope that maybe it’s something that grows to help him in the future. Thinking of yourself as a walking, talking existencial crisis has to be exhausting in more ways than one._

 

_“You know, it is hard to believe…” Nick comments, derailing your train of thought, “Somehow, out of all of the people in the world, and out of all the places in the world, two people like you and me just kinda...jumped through time.” He muses, waving his hand in a circular motion. “To us, I mean. One minute we’ve got friends and a house and a picket fence and in the blink of an eye we wake up and it’s all gone to shit. And against all odds, we both end up in the same place and get to know each other.”_

 

_Nick pauses and raises the cigarette to his lips for just a moment, as if he’d meant to take a drag before returning it to its previous position. A bit of ash crumbles off and bounces from his slacks and into the dirt._

 

_“How crazy is that?” He adds offhandedly, looking into the fire._

 

_“You think we might have been friends if we’d met back then?” You ask, it’s a hypothetical question, sure. You’d never known Nick before now, or at least, you don’t think you did. “I wonder if we’d ever just passed by each other without knowing.”_

 

 _“Well, nothing’s impossible. You and Nick-” He pauses as you fix him with a stare, “-alright. You aren’t going to let that go, are you? Fine, You and_ I _might have crossed paths on more than one occasion.” He concedes, “As you already know, I worked at the BADTFL Regional office. Lived near that area too.”_

 

_“I can’t say I’ve been to the area more than we’ve been already.” You admit, pulling a bit of your sleeping bag around you to keep warm. “My family and I lived in Sanctuary.”_

 

_At this, Nick’s eyes widen a bit._

 

_“Sanctuary? You mean that place up north? Kinda a heap of garbage now.” The detective comments, “I used to visit the area from time to time. Actually made a trip early that morning before the bomb hit. Jenny’s parents lived there, nice old couple. They didn’t have any other kids so once we lost Jenny, uh, I kept in touch with them. Checked in on them now and again to make sure they were doing alright.”_

 

_“I remember though-” Nick says, “-it was busy that day lot of weird stuff going on. Looking back now, some higher ups probably already saw the bomb coming and were getting ready to get the heck outta dodge.”_

 

 

* * *

 

 

The car door slammed shut with a click as Nick Valentine settled into the faux leather upholstery and inserted the key into the ignition. The sun was hardly up and here he was. Jenny’s parents were getting old, that was for sure. Only old people got up this early and somehow thought it was normal. The cop sighed as he met his own gaze in the rearview mirror and was humbled by his own graying temples- he’d end up like them soon enough. Thank god he hadn’t started balding though, and still had his full dark head of hair. Though if work continued on the same track it was, he doubted his hair would just be satisfied with greying.

 

He sighed as he waited to back out of the driveway, a line of military vehicles driving up past the suburbs blocked his way but gave him just enough time to light up a smoke. He rolled the window down a smidge and took a deep drag before promptly coughing his lungs out. But today was probably the last  day he’d be able to enjoy to enjoy a good smoke so he might as well enjoy it while it lasted.

 

With the vehicles no longer blocking his way, he backed out of the driveway and started on the drive back to the station. It was going to be a long day, especially if the door-to-door folks were going to be as active in his area if they were here. As the scenery rolled by, he noted the number of men in typical sales gear moving from house to house already this early in the morning. However, these details were soon discarded from his thoughts as he headed out past Sanctuary and across the bridge.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.”

 

Nick stood staring at the banner that had been hung over the entrance to his office- pink and glittery and declaring a ‘HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY’ with hearts to all that walked past. And judging by the snickers growing behind him and the steadily growing group of coworkers come to gawk he had an idea of who was responsible.

 

“You nuts know that it’s _Halloween_ next week, right?” Valentine countered, turning around to take in the sight of his fellow officers grinning at him like a cat with a canary. “Who’s idea was this? Until someone fesses up, I’m gonna blame it on Hardy.”

 

“Well, you weren’t supposed to see it until you’d gotten _back_ from your sick days.” Hardy replied with a smile, a female officer with dark skin and her hair tied back into a fluffy bun. “We’d have had a cake by then. And besides, it was Rogers who got the sign, he couldn’t wait to hang it up.”

 

(‘Hardy, ya damn snitch!’)

 

“You don’t really expect me to not come in, do you?” Nick replied with a smile, reaching into his pocket and withdrawing another smoke. “Besides, I just forgot the forms for the doc’ on my desk. Once I get those, I promise I’m out of here for today at least.”

 

“The only reason I’d expect you not to come in is if your legs got busted.” Hardy replied before her lips twitched upwards in a smile. “And even then you’d just be late because you’d drag your sorry self in anyway.”

 

However, as Nick withdrew his cigarette, Hardy frowned.

 

“Aren’t those things the reason you’re not supposed to be coming in anyway?” She accused, fixing Nick with a hard stare as the rest of the officers who didn’t have work to do decided to stay for the gossip.

 

“Well, yeah-” Nick began but only before being interrupted by a fit of coughing, “-sorry. But I’m just heading in to get the old air bags scanned. Once the docs tells me what I need to do with my lungs, I’ll listen. But if today’s the last day I can have a few smokes, I might as well.” He explained, “Besides, this is my last pack. I’d rather not let it go to waste.”

 

Without another word, he grinned and jingled his keys at her before unlocking the door to his office and making his way in towards his desk. He let out a cough-riddled sigh before shuffling through the papers covering the table, eventually finding the forms he’d needed to fill out as well as the latest edition of the Boston Bugle. Unrolling it, he felt himself go numb as he stared at the headline- “Case Closed on Crime Boss Eddie Winter”, as well as a section of a reprinted article detailing his past crimes and one he was far too familiar with. He tapped the ash from the end of his smoke into the tray on his desk, pausing as he let it sit there. Nick’s eyes rested on the framed photographs on his desk, though one in particular held his gaze. He crushed the cigarette out, leaving the remains in the tray as the smoke faded.

 

“I’m doing this for you, Jen.” He murmured quietly to himself, staring wistfully at her photograph on his desk. “Can’t lock up that bastard if I can’t breathe.”

 

Digging through his pocket, he withdrew his box of cigarettes and his lighter. Only three were missing from the box- two he’d smoked on the way here, and one he’d just crushed. Without another thought, he tossed them towards his trash can where they landed with a satisfying clang with the ashtray following soon after. Nick reached for the framed photograph, turning it over and undoing the clasps to free the picture inside before he set down the empty frame.

 

Gathering up his forms, Officer Valentine stood and observed the picture he held in his hand. Fifteen years she’d been gone, and here she was in that picture looking as pretty as the day he’d met her.

 

 _Wonder what she’d think of me now._ He thought, _I ain’t aged nearly as pretty._

 

It had been because of Jenny, or at least, because of her murder that Nick had taken up smoking. Drinking only really took you so far- it numbed you, sure. But it also turned you into a wreck and there’s not much you can do drunk if you’re trying to catch a murderer. Smoking though, was something you could do anywhere and it calmed the nerves. He couldn’t get in trouble for smoking on the job. But it was the smoking that’d left him where he was now. Back then he didn’t think the case would take nearly as long as it had, that they’d catch Winter any day and then he’d set down the lighter for good. Fifteen years later and it was finally starting to take its toll. They’d let Winter off the hook on a lame plea deal and even though the case was officially closed as far as the books went, Eddie Winter was still out there and he still had blood on his hands and still managed to get out of any charge they landed on him. And he’d be dead before he took that lying down.

 

“I don’t really want to go.” Nick huffed to himself, placing the photograph into an inner jacket pocket where it wouldn’t get folded. “Some fancy shmancy medical scanner that the CIT worked up. But at least you’re here to keep me company.” He sighed, patting the pocket fondly before coughing to the empty room.

 

 


	2. First Steps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick remembers the day the bomb dropped and the day he first woke up.

“Mr Valentine? The doctor is ready for you.”

 

With a groan and a wheeze, the officer rose from his seat in the waiting room, having chosen a spot that was a comfortable distance away from the others still listening for their names to be called. He carefully stepped over some stray building blocks that had been tossed playfully by a small toddler sitting on the floor and made his way over to the nurse that had called his name.

 

The CIT wasn’t necessarily a hospital, more like a college campus,  but from what he understood they still offered a number of services related to health that common practitioners couldn’t yet afford. It was of course his connections to the BADTFL that had gotten him in, and once he went through whatever procedures that the scientists here had cooked up for him he assumed they’d send whatever he needed over to the docs to get him back on track.

 

The nurse led him down a series of hallways, all with the same sterile feeling to them and lit with bright electric light. If they wanted to make this place feel like a hospital, they sure got that part down at the least. It wasn’t as busy as he’d thought it be, with only the clicking of their footsteps as company. Nick felt the tickle of a fit of hacking in his throat, but managed to hold it back as he felt it would suddenly be too loud in an environment that let off an air as serious as the one here.

 

He only managed to relax once the nurse had showed him to a room and left him to wait for his Doctor to arrive. Here at least everything felt a little more casual, or at least as casual as a doctor’s office could be. Paintings of zeppelins hung on the walls, an examination bed covered in tissue paper stood on the other side of the room, and a strange hulking device connected to a terminal was positioned opposite a window with a decent view of a small decorative pond and a number of trees that had burst into full fall colors.

 

Nick wandered over to the device and noted how it looked more like an upside down test tube than anything else, maybe with a few gizmos and extra wires attached. He scratched at the stubble that had started to grow at the side of his face and looked over the machine as the door opened again and in entered a younger man wearing a pristine white labcoat that ended around his knees.

 

“Ah, Officer Valentine! Welcome to the CIT.” The doctor greeted before he closed the door behind him and offered his hand. “I hope everything here is up to your standards.” He joked.

 

Nick nodded in return, shaking his hand amiably before returning them to his pockets.

 

“Some fancy gadgets you’ve got here.” He commented, standing back and looking at the device. “I’m guessing this is the thing I’ll be getting into?”

 

“That is correct.” The doctor responded as he took a pair of reading glasses from the pocket of his labcoat and perched them on his nose. “We just have to go over some paperwork and we can get the procedure started.”

 

The doctor flipped through a number of pages on his clipboard and soon found the documents he’d been looking for.

 

“Patient name: Nick Valentine. Age: 37.” He listed off and looked for the officer’s approval for each detail. “And you’re here due to the side-effects of chain smoking. Shortness of breath, difficulty breathing, fits of coughing, wheezing, decrease in athletic activity, and an increase in illness. Correct?”

 

“Sounds about right.” Nick answered plainly.

 

“Mmhmm.” The doctor replied, “Records also say that in addition to your recent troubles with smoking, you were due in for a number of psychological procedures around a decade and a half ago. None of which you ever attended.”

 

“Wasn’t interested.” The officer explained gruffly.

 

“No need to be obstinate, officer.” The doctor commented, setting the clipboard aside. “I’ve been briefed on your files. You have my condolences, I understand that people need time to deal with these manner of things in their own way.” He said softly, “But in retrospect, it’s probably for the best that you’ve come in now. Our technology has greatly advanced in the past number of years.”

 

“No offense, but I’m not interested in getting a shrink.” Nick huffed, instinctively reaching for the pocket where he’d kept his cigarettes before realizing that he’d tossed them out. “Like I said, I’ve been doing just fine on my own.”

 

“Still, there is a part of the psychological procedures that I feel could still be valuable.” The Doctor insisted, “I’m not implying you get a psychiatrist, and now with the technology that we have it could prove to help a lot of people.”

 

The cop’s curiosity had been piqued, and he motioned for the doctor to continue.

 

“You see, according to your medical files, it was originally planned for you to go through a number of treatments.” The doctor explained, “At the start of the treatments and at varying intervals in between, you’d receive a full brain scan. These scans could then be compared and studied for potential physical evidence of psychological change throughout the process.” He continued, “Of course, that was years ago. Now we have something far more advanced.”

 

The doctor patted the strange machine next to him.

 

“In addition to general medical scans, this machine can make comprehensive Neurotransmissional Scans.” He elaborated. “In layman’s terms, this means we can scan and store the contents of your brain ranging anywhere from the physical structure to personality traits and the psychological effects of trauma or certain professions.” He said, “This means that, should we make a comprehensive database of scans, we can potentially help a great number of people by comparing and isolating certain traits that can lead to a number of conditions. We could even identify potential criminals and get them help before they have the chance to do anything questionable. It would be a great help to us if you’d allow us to do so.”

 

“So you want to get your hands in my greymatter so you can make a scan and compare it to everyone else’s?” Nick summarized, making sure he understood.

 

“It’s a completely non-invasive process.” The doctor added, “We can even have it done simultaneously with your normal medical scan to examine your lungs.”

 

“And you think you can catch convicts before they’ve got the chance to even _be_ convicts? Set them on a different path?” Nick asked, examining his reflection in the glass of the machine. He was a very different man than the one he’d known back then. “Sounds like you’re trying to put me out of the job.”

 

“I’m not guaranteeing that we’ll be able to catch everything. After all, tests are still in progress and the database is still relatively small in comparison to what we’ll need.” He clarified, “But each new scan is another step forward. And in the future, each person we help is one less tragedy in the big scheme of things.”

 

Nick drew in a breath, immediately interrupted by wheezing.

 

“A-alright.” The officer coughed, “You’ve sold me your pitch. Where do I sign?” He asked.

“I’m glad you asked.” The doctor responded, opening a drawer on his desk and removing a large stack of papers. “It’s not necessary to read it all if you don’t feel you have the time.” He said, “Although my superiors insist you do. This packet mostly lists the permissions of the scans for use by the CIT. Just sign here…. Here…. And initial here. I’ll fill in anything else.”

 

            Nick nodded, taking the packet and pen offered by the doctor and he promptly signed the required areas. He couldn’t really see what they’d need permissions for. After all, it’d just be a bunch of data on a terminal. Most people probably wouldn’t even be able to make it out anyway.

 

“Alright, now if you’ll remove your jacket and hat, I’ll guide you through the procedure.” The doctor said, typing into the terminal and releasing the lock on the door to the device.

 

As the door opened, a small cushioned seat and headrest emerged from a panel and a number of strange glowing rings rose from the floor to take their position at various points inside the machine. Nick watched the device warily as he shrugged his jacket off and laid it across the medical bed with his hat soon joining it. He ran his fingers through his hair and took a wheezy breath in preparation as he straightened his suspenders and made his way into the scanner and seated himself.

 

“Now, I’m going to close the door. Just stay seated and relax.” The doctor instructed as the door lowered and sealed itself in place. “The rings around you will start moving up and down as the scan commences. They will emit lasers that can map your physiology- they’re harmless so don’t be alarmed. If you ask me, just sit back and close your eyes. Maybe take a nap. It’s a bit of a slow process until the end.” He explained, “Under no circumstances are you to stand. The rings won’t stop moving and you’ll be at risk of hurting yourself or damaging the machine. If there’s an emergency, I’ll authorize the machine’s shut down procedures.”

 

“Sounds simple enough.” Nick responded, letting his head fall back against his headrest, rolling his shoulders as he settled down for the wait.

 

He listened to the machine hum around him as it started up and the rings began to pulse with light as they were set in motion. Suddenly, he was covered with a web of green criss-crossing lasers as the rings encircled him and began to move up and down to map his form. He squinted his eyes against the lights as one moved up past his face and eventually decided to take the doctor’s advice and just close his eyes against it all. He rested his hand against his jacket pocket that contained the photo of Jenny as he allowed himself to relax.

 

“The scan is in progress, it’s going well.” The doctor commented, clicking a few keys on the terminal. “Here, this will give you something to look at.”

 

Nick opened his eyes as a small portion of the glass in front of him lit up with a hologram-like display. There he saw a virtual version of himself in a sitting position on one side, and a model of a brain on the other. Underneath each of these was a percentage showing the amount scanned. He had to admit it was fascinating especially as with each pass of the lasers another layer was stripped away and analyzed. First his muscles, and then into the deeper tissue until the machine had honed in on his lungs and began to visualize them before his eyes. His brain though, was a much slower process and much less entertaining to watch. It was just layer on layer of folds and patterns, starting from one small sliver and steadily growing.

 

Eventually deciding that this would take longer than expected, Nick closed his eyes again, only to open them now and again to check the progress of the scan and to glance at the doctor working on the terminal next to him. At one point he felt that he must have fallen asleep, because it was the sound of a distant alarm going off that woke him, with only a couple percentages left on the scan. Nick blinked drowsily and looked past the hologram and to the window outside.

 

95%

 

“Is everything alright?” He asked, looking towards the doctor who’d stood from his terminal.

 

“It’s fine. Don’t get up.” He responded as he briskly walked to the door and opened it to find that the sounds of growing panic greeted him upon finding a number of employees rushing down through the halls.

 

96%

 

“Are you sure?” Nick asked as he shifted in his seat.

 

“ _Don’t get up_.” The doctor commanded firmly as he hurriedly sat back down at the terminal. “It’s being handled. I’m redirecting the upload of your files to the main server at HQ.”

 

97%

 

A sharp whistling noise filled the air and Nick whirled his head back to the window as screams and shouts and the furious rummaging of the people in the building began to grow further. Suddenly an alarm went off inside the building, filling it all with a red light as the siren above the door began to blare its warnings.

 

“Just stay seated sir!” The doctor ordered, “It’s all under control! Security protocols are in order.”

 

98%

 

In an instant, a blinding flash of light filled the officer’s vision and he pressed himself back into his seat away from the violent glare. The floor beneath him shook and he felt the deep rumble of something far off in the distance. When the light had dimmed enough for him to open his eyes he felt his stomach drop. The giant fiery shape in the distance of a forming mushroom cloud had washed out everything else in his vision as the shockwave raced towards them. The siren cut off and the power flickered.

 

99%

 

Violently, metal shutters slammed down across the window and blocked out the vengeful light of the bomb, leaving him and the doctor in comparable darkness now that all they had were the sterile lights of the building.

 

“Let me the hell out of here!” Nick shouted as he slammed his palm against the door, blinking against the green light from the machine. “That’s a fucking nuke! We need to get to a shelter!”

 

“JUST STAY THERE!” The Doctor yelled, standing with his back to the shuttered window. “It’s going to be _FINE_ -“

 

100%

 

In an instant, the shockwave caught up with them, blowing in the wall like it was some sort of balloon. The doctor crashed into the front of the machine as everything felt like it started to slow. Suddenly the pressure reached Nick and the sheer force of it all must have caused him to blackout. Because that force and his vision blacking out was the last thing he could remember before he felt that slight ‘jump’. It was like the short feeling of shock one might feel when they think they’ve reached the bottom of the stairs, but find there’s still one more waiting for them. That jump of panic and realization was all he felt as he realized that he was _falling._

 

Nick Valentine let out a shout of confusion as he whipped down _something_ as he felt the slick surface against his back as he continued to gain momentum. He scrambled against it, slamming his palms down before feeling his hand catch on something and feeling an utterly sickening sensation of something tearing.

 

“Shit!”

 

His shoulder slammed against a sharp turn and the floor dropped out from under him. He didn’t have time to react as his vision was once again filled with blinding light and then blackness once more as he hit the ground with a crunch.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Nick’s eyes opened slowly, or at least, that was the only thing he could compare it to. He wanted to open his eyes and as if on command the world around him began to brighten and focus out of the fuzzy cloud of darkness he’d been trapped in. Everything felt so _heavy_ , especially his head, almost like he’d had a hard night drinking. Everything was so bright and loud and there was an annoying low buzzing noise that he couldn’t quite place.

 

            Groaning, he lifted himself from his face down position and attempted to sit up. He clutched at his chest, feeling the tatters of his clothes and the strange absence of any tightness there. Looking around, all he could see was trash, and trash of all kinds. Beyond that, was a bright blue cloudless sky and an expanse of just _brown_ \- dirt and dust. Had he just been knocked out through the blast? Shouldn’t the radiation have killed him?

 

            He looked around though, and realized that none of this looked familiar at all. Where were the trees? The pond and the highway? Even the crumbling remains of the CIT building that you’d expect to find? And still there was that low buzzing noise now accompanied by a series of worrying sounding clicks- like a gas oven that wouldn’t light.

 

            “What the hell?” He asked to the open air, at a loss for words before he realized something.

 

            _He couldn’t breathe._

 

            Officer Valentine let out a choking noise, realizing he couldn’t even feel the muscles he needed to breathe. It was like it wasn’t even a thing anymore. He tried to stand, but soon fell to his knees as he struggled for breath and tumbled down the pile of trash that he’d landed on. He reached for the tie he’d been wearing only to find it absent. These weren’t the clothes he’d worn earlier! But this wasn’t the main problem he was experiencing, he clawed at his shirt, popping the buttons as he freed himself from anything that could possibly be constricting him from breathing and he let out a yell of shock as he caught the bright glint of silver as he brought one of his hands to his chest.

 

            At first, he couldn’t even register it. His brain had drawn a complete blank as he sat there, staring at his right hand glaring against his own body like a silver skeleton poking from the flesh of his wrist that had torn away like a glove in his fall. The panic of being unable to breath was now lost on him as he watched the alien appendage twitch in time with his own actions. He looked on in silent horror as he turned the metal hand over, experimentally flexing it and hearing the joints click as they moved. In the surface of one of his fingers, he caught a flash of bright glowing yellow eyes and launched himself back as if trying to escape his own reflection.

 

            “What the fuck-“ He breathed, or at least, his voice held the quality that he’d breathed. “What the _fuck_ -?”

 

            He felt a shudder run through him as he raised his ‘normal’ hand to his hair. It all just felt _fake_ every part of him felt **_fake_**! Even his voice had some sort of processed sound to it when he’d listened close enough, his hair felt synthetic, and when he touched something wet he silently hoped that when he drew his hand down to look that he’d find blood. Instead it was a slick, black oily substance that had coated part of his hair and had begun to dribble down the side of his face.

 

            Nick Valentine sat there in shock, simply existing for the longest time as still as a statue. The bright blue sky began to fade, turning the reflections on his glistening mechanical hand into a splash of orange and yellow as the sun started to set in the distance. He made a sighing noise as his optics clicked up to examine the wasteland skyline. Silently, he stood and looked back behind him for the first time to find a towering ruin of a warehouse. When he looked up, he found a garbage chute of some kind- the one he’d fallen out of. He looked down, finding his shirt torn open as he’d left it, a pair of slightly dirty slacks covering his legs, and bare feet. The skin on his chest and feet, he guessed, had to be as fake as the stuff that had gotten torn away on his hand.

 

            Nick Valentine tried to lick his lips. Ah. No tongue. He raised his metallic hand to his mouth and curiously felt around, feeling a finger clank against a number of metal things that probably shouldn’t be in a human mouth. He let his hand drop, realizing that wasn’t an option anymore, and rolled his shoulders. At least he still knew he had those, and that it was a calming physical action he was still capable of. A part of him was worried that he wasn’t panicking about this.

 

            Taking his first steps, Nick ventured down the pile of trash and rubble and onto the coarse yellowed grass below. His shadow stretched long before him as he stepped onto the concrete path before him and began his journey to find the entrance to the building he’d been thrown out of.

 

It was his only lead.


	3. From the Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick puts his detective skills to work and doesn't like what he finds.

 

The handle to the entrance of the strange building did little more than jiggle as Nick attempted to let himself in. He let out a quiet groan, cautiously checking behind him as he pressed his ear to the door to listen for any signs of someone being inside. After a few moments of patient listening, he backed up readying himself for his next action. It'd been a long while since he'd done this, never barefoot, and normally his joints would very much protest in discomfort but maybe…

 

Valentine braced himself as he raised his foot and promptly crashed it into the door right next to the handle. The lock shattered under the intensity of the blow and the door whipped open and slammed into the wall by its hinges, causing a trail of dust and debris to fall from the ceiling in small clouds. He moved back a bit in surprise from the amount of force he'd delivered, nearly sending himself off balance as he took a couple quick steps back to compensate. And speaking of steps, his foot felt fine. He didn't know whether he needed to worry about that or not and promptly pushed it out of his mind.

 

Taking his first few tentative steps into the building, it soon became obvious that at some point not long ago there had been people here, and a lot of them, and they'd cleared house. It reminded him of a number of gang busts where they'd been just a little too late. But this was some conspiracy theory level bust- papers were strewn about and those that must have been deemed too important for undeserving eyes still smoldered in metal trash cans that had been lit aflame. Some areas that looked like they had terminals at one point had been ransacked, tables were overturned, and as he ventured further in he found a few plates of food and mugs of coffee that still seemed to be good.

 

 _What the hell happened here?_ He thought, self consciously pressing his metal hand into his open shirt to keep it out of sight. _Where even is here?_

 

Wherever he was, somewhere away from the blast zone if he had to guess, a lot of people had left in a hurry. But when people hurried, they got sloppy. There had to be something left that could tell him what was going on, and why he was like this. Was there some sort of terrifying malfunction with the scanning machine because of the blast? Like the kind you read in those sci-fi horror stories? He had bad lungs, so it made it so he didn't _need_ them?

 

Nick shook his head numbly as he grabbed the burning trashcan and dragged it outside with him. He couldn't afford to jump to conclusions, and in all honesty he wasn't sure if he could take it mentally either. After the events from earlier, he felt empty and in a way, he was probably still in shock.  After all, panicking seemed like the normal thing to do and instead he'd busied himself with tipping out the charred contents of the can outside of the building and smothering the fire with dirt to look for at least a few scraps in a packet that might have survived. He tried to remember the steps to treating someone in shock, he'd had to do it before during some of the more traumatic cases he'd been called to, but he could only do so halfheartedly. Treating himself was the last thing on his mind, despite the fact that it should have been higher on his list of priorities. He needed answers.

 

He went about clearing the area methodically, first dealing with anything that might have been set aflame to destroy evidence while keeping an eye out for anyone who might have been left behind. A quick run-through of the four warehouse floors determined that he’d been left alone, even though he hadn’t quite checked every nook and cranny where they might have been hiding. Something in his mind assured him that there were ‘no organic life forms present’ and that disturbed him more than the thought of someone sitting in the shadows watching him work.

 

After the fires had been dealt with he quickly sifted through the many piles, ignoring anything that had been charred or burnt to a crisp as many of the single papers were, and instead began filling his own wire wastebin with anything of possible value to his ‘investigation’. Books and booklets were charred, but the inner pages that were left untouched could prove useful. A few holotapes here and there left in the bottom of the basket that hadn’t bubbled up from the heat still looked very useable after having been insulated by all of the paper on top. He’d just have to find something to play them in.

 

It was then just a matter of securing the building, especially after hearing something large, grunting, and probably not friendly wandering around in the bushes outside of his periphery. Nick made quick work of dragging his finds inside where he promptly swung the door shut and dragged a desk over to secure it. Curiosity overtaking him, he checked a nearby window and promptly ducked out of sight. It was a bear, and not the ‘teddy’ kind. In the brief glance he’d gotten, he decided that it looked sick, very sick.

 

“Alright… alright…” He muttered to himself, dumping out the contents of the can on an undisturbed desk.

 

Nick hastily checked the drawers for something he could write with- a pen or a pencil maybe, and seized one of the scraps of paper that had been flung about that he’d deemed unimportant. There, he scribbled down a hasty list that one might call a plan of action. His mind was everywhere at once and  this was one way of putting it on track.

 

  1. Find phone- call the station/animal control
  2. Treat injuries
  3. Find holotape player
  4. Examine evidence- find goal of operation
  5. Continue investigation until backup arrives



 

As he looked over his list, Nick nodded feeling like he had at least a little under control. He mentally noted to himself that if a bomb had gone off not too long ago (because at this point, he’d _had_ to have been moved by someone) then his contacts could be in a fallout shelter somewhere or even  worse…

 

No, he wasn’t going to think about that. The fallout shelter was close to the station, Hardy, Rogers, and the rest probably made it out ok. Hell, they were all probably worried sick about _him._ He glanced down at his metal hand and tucked it back out of sight. _He_ was already starting to be worried sick about _himself_. He didn’t know how he’d explain any of this to his fellow law enforcement officers, but he figured that would be something to deal with in person.

 

Finding a phone didn’t take long, but finding a phone that _worked_ proved to be a completely different issue. And stranger yet, these were nice house phones- he owned a model himself. But the plastic was stained, dirty, marked, buttons were missing, in all just hunks of junk. He had no idea what anyone could have done to get these in the shape they were. They weren’t smashed or broken they were just… old.

 

Despite his efforts to produce a workable form of communication, the quest to find a phone proved fruitless. He’d found every phone in the building and piled them onto yet another of the empty desks, like he was making some sort of collection. Nick even attempted in taking a few apart in hopes that he’d make sense of their innards and be able to consolidate all of the workable pieces into a single operating phone. But even then all he was left with were corroded wires and bits of metal that were so old they’d started to rust in their cases. None of this made any sense to him. He drew out his pencil and drew a line from his first step and directed it down to the bottom. He’d have to solve that problem later.

 

Now was probably a good time to check off step number two. Physically, he felt fine, but he’d had a steady dribble of oily substance down the side of his face since he’d woken up. It had stained the front of his already partly ruined shirt, and he’d like something to cover his hand. Yet another slightly morbid part of him wanted to take note of all of the changes that had taken place with his body. He remembered  passed a bathroom earlier on his mad hunt for a working phone and decided that would have to do.

 

* * *

 

 

The first thing that Nick Valentine noticed upon looking into the mirror were his eyes. The bright yellow glowing rings were unnerving in a primal sense. The same kind of primal sense that ancient humans might have had catching sight of the yellow eyes of some beast in the shadows. He leaned in a little closer and pulled back his lower eyelid slightly, fully examining the structure to the best of his abilities. There was a glass pupil with an aperture of some kind, and if he had to guess the glowing irises were simply there for looks. What kind of looks whoever had built them hoped to accomplish- he had no idea. And those eyes were set into a metal socket.

 

“Is there any damn part of me that _isn’t_ metal?” He cursed quietly to himself as he tilted his head to get a better look at the leak he’d been dealing with.

 

He practically felt the whirr of the aperture in his eyes as they widened. Just like his hand, a small chunk of his scalp and hair had been ripped away and underneath was, again, more metal. Here though, a small section of tubing had been exposed, smaller than a drinking straw, that was set into a groove along the metal. A small tear in that tube had been the source of the leaking. Nick stared at his reflection in the mirror for a moment before erupting in a storm of cursing that would probably make any nun within a fifty mile radius pray for his soul.

 

He stomped out of the bathroom, filling the air with angry muttering as he aggressively tracked down a stray toolbox that had been left and began to fling the contents about until he’d found the only thing suitable enough to fix the small tear that he could think of- duct tape. Stomping back to the bathroom, he tore off the already stained sleeve of his shirt and began haphazardly mopping up the oil that had gotten into his hair and had slicked the area around the tubing. The tubing itself had a little bit of give, so he was able to pull it away just enough to encircle it with a strip and then press it back into place. No more damn leaks. He was a _person_ and here he was fixing himself up like a goddamned faulty air conditioner.

 

He cleaned the rest of his hair the best he could with the cloth from his torn off sleeve. He found if he brushed his hair just right with his hands, it’d cover most of the piece of missing skin. Nick then tore off the other sleeve, and then tore it down one side lengthwise for a single nice strip of fabric that he then wound around his exposed silver hand.

 

“I… am… a… person-” He grumbled to himself, almost as if saying so he’d be able to convince the parts of him to stop being metal. “I have _always_ been a person.”

 

He made his way back to his list and promptly crossed off step number 2.

 

“I am a person.” He repeated again, now focusing his efforts on step 3- find a holotape player. “I am a person. A person who needs to find some way to play these tapes. I am a-”

 

A quiet click suddenly registered and he glanced down at his arm. There, a portion of skin had separated off from his forearm in a perfect rectangular shape. As he brought it up, the panel whirred up on a hinge and created an opening just large enough for a holotape. Nick stared at it dumbly and his shoulders slouched.

 

“I’m a fucking tape player.”

 

Nick ran a hand through his hair as he leaned against the wall next to the desk and slid down it. He drew up his knees and rested his arm across them, taking a moment to absorb the silence around him and the rotting of the building because god, everything was just falling apart around him. He pinched the bridge of his nose, taking a few moments to himself before blindly fumbling for a holotape on the desk behind him.

 

 _I could really use a smoke._ He thought to himself as he shoved the tape into his arm.

Nick felt the tape click into place and the whirrs of the machine in there do what it was supposed to do. He leaned back against the wall and let himself simply go limp as he listened to the contents of the tape.

 

_Research notes of Science team 8_

_Lead Scientist reporting_

_Day 627 of operations_

_Even after whatever he’d gone through  prior to his recovery by the Institute and in early experimentational procedures, the  subject has exceeded our expectations, and yet I fear that he is the exact opposite of the goals that the Institute has in mind. He has passed all strength and durability tests required of an Institute produced Synthetic Humanoid and yet the question of his morality still remains. In return for the housing, safety, and information that my team has been able to supply, he’s been remarkably amiable towards helping us continue our research. I asked his reasoning, and the subject was quite practical in his approach. Where else would he go?_

_I fear that the subject, and this subject in particular is simply too good for the work that the Institute requires him for. He’s too nice. He’s too good of a person. It almost pains me that he doesn’t know what might be in store for him._

_Aside from potential insubordinance the Institute might experience due to his moral views, there are also a few quirks that are unique to him as one would expect with this particular form of Synth. Despite his understanding that he neither possesses lungs or a respiratory system synonymous to one a human might have, he often asks for packs of cigarettes which we happily supply. He also asks that we no longer refer to him as Officer Valentine, as his station was abandoned after the onset of a nuclear blast. Instead, he’s asked us to call him Nick._

_……_

_Officials are due to visit in fifteen days to monitor the results of our testing. After that, we’re supposed to relocate all modes of Institute operation to a single new area to be designated as headquarters. I hope all goes well, for Nick’s sake._

 

The voice from the holotape soon faded, taken over by a smothering silence and weight of uncertainty. Suddenly, Nick Valentine was faced with the startling realization that he wasn’t quite all there. He never remembered helping anyone with any sort of research besides the doctor at the CIT. And those things that the voice had said about ‘Synthetic Humanoids’, he didn’t quite understand but he got the general gist of it because he didn’t know what to call most of him now that had been replaced with metal and tubing. Had the fall he’d taken been bad enough to scramble his memories?

 

He looked to his arm and fumbled a bit with the area that had opened to reveal the tape player before he simply thought about opening it. His arm then obliged and ejected the tape. Taking it, Nick turned the tape around to check the label -627. Just like the day the scientist on the tape had reported. Hauling himself up, Nick sifted through his finds and took all of the tapes he’d recovered down onto the floor with him. He checked the labels, noting some were missing and that one had been labeled with a star next to the number. Soon all of the tapes had been arranged in a line before him in chronological order, starting with a tape labeled ‘14’.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_Research notes of Science team 8_

_Lead Scientist reporting_

_Day 14 of operations_

_A number of Synthetics have been appropriately assembled by the research team. We shouldn’t need the extras if all goes well. We have already recovered the original model and finished initial repairs to his database, repairing an issue with short-term memory loss and a basic data wipe, the subject is in perfect working order. We’ve received the files from the Officials that we are to use in the situation that more issues with residual memories crop up, unlike former experiments prior to the subject being assigned to our team, we’re to use one set of scans . The scans belong to one ‘Nick Valentine’, formerly an officer of the BADTFL Regional Office, who has been confirmed deceased by former CIT officials after Building 12 was decimated by a nuclear blast on October 22 of 2077._

_These scans in particular are one of a handful of complete and error-free files that survived intact. The other teams are have been assigned the remaining files which consist of a number of Ex-Cons, a former politician, and a journalist for archiving. I’m grateful that we managed to luck out in that lottery. However, we’ve been warned of possible trauma that our subject may have experienced. Records show that the original scans files were completed and transferred in the midst of the blast. It is highly likely that the subject will be able to remember his own demise, up to the moment before death. We now have a team of psychologists with us should this unique case prove detrimental to our research._

_By observing a number of the subject’s memories that were on file, the Institute was able to create an exo-skin for the synthetic ‘skeleton’ based on the subject’s former appearance. It is enough for now to hold up to the tests we need to complete and will likely to help him reacclimate to his current situation easier than it would be waking up to a metal endoskeleton. The upload of the scans will commence within the next half hour. Wish me luck._

 

 

* * *

 

 

_Research notes of Science team 8_

_Lead Scientist reporting_

_Day 53 of operations_

_The subject, or Officer Valentine as we’ve come to call him, has been amiable company for the past month. From our conversations, he has dealt well with the initial shock experienced upon waking as a Synth. However, due to his possession of a very human personality and memories, I believe that he may be withholding information on his current mental state. Thankfully, he’s been largely helpful in assisting our studies. I’ve informed him that the Institute, formerly the CIT, was researching the possible  use of synths to prolong human life and that the brain scan that Nick Valentine had volunteered was considered property of the Institute and if he objected to its current use we could dispose of it and, should he wish it, him as well._

_Thankfully, after a bit of deliberation, he declined both offers._

_For a moment, I almost thought he would have preferred to be deactivated. The entire weight of the situation is astounding for this man. I hope should something similar ever happen to me, I’d have the bravery to decline as well. Besides, even if he had, we’d have just wiped the Synth’s memory banks clean and re-uploaded the scan. Failure in this project is not an option. We’d just have to keep trying over and over until at least one version of Officer Valentine took the offer, I’m just happy that we didn’t have to. I like this one._

 

* * *

 

 

_Research notes of Science team 8_

_Lead Scientist reporting_

_Day 272 * of operations_

_Officer Valentine is here to join me today on my daily recordings. I’ve been asked by officials to conduct an interview for future production of Synths to encourage possible hardware alterations and protocol additions. Thank you for agreeing to participate in the interview Officer._

 

_“Glad to be here, doc.”_

 

_Now, Officer Valentine first off and please be honest, if you could rate the level of care and housing you’ve received while helping us at the Institute._

 

_“Well, considering what we’ve seen during our little field trips to the Commonwealth, this place is a five star hotel in comparison. The people on your team have been pretty ok company, ‘cept for Wickershins. Don’t know who pissed in his cereal.”_

 

_Ignoring the last comment, are there any changes you’d like to be seen made in the future for other Synths who may follow in your place?_

 

_“Hrm, well a larger selection of wardrobe maybe. I’ve got the same five sets of shirts and pants that you’ve given me. Gets a little bland after a while. And entertainment is a little lacking. Since you fellas didn’t install a ‘sleep’ function, I’ve got more free time than I know what to do with.”_

 

_Thank you for your input. Now, are there any problems or issues you’d like to address when it comes to your hardware?_

 

_“Well, there’s a bit in my left shoulder that keeps catching when I raise it too high. And one of the things that caught me off guard when I was getting used to this was that there isn’t really a way to make those ‘comfort’ actions, you know? Taking deep breaths is supposed to be good for you, but you can’t quite do that when you don’t have the parts for it. It’d also be nice if it’s possible to have something to eat or taste with.  Maybe a better alternative to closing your eyes as well. Mine take a little while to boot up, it’s not close enough to blinking for me. And the option to change eye color might be nice. Blue’s not really my color. I had- *ahem*- I’m more used to hazel.”_

 

_A number of these may have to wait for future technologies to develop, but should they be completed you’ll be the first to know Officer. As for a few others, we can have maintenance take a look at you. And that will be all for now, I’ll see what can be done about getting some more activities in for you to enjoy in the meantime. Thank you for your compliance._

 

 

* * *

 

 

_Research notes of Science team 8_

_Lead Scientist reporting_

_Day 642 of operations_

_The Institute has decided that they have no use for the Synths and research that has come about from our operation. There has been a breakthrough in the biotech program that they are now putting all of our resources into. Current operations are to cease and all files and Synths used in the research are to be destroyed. They’ve ordered everyone to leave immediately, and to burn what we have for the time being- all of our hard work for nothing._

 

_-kkkzzzzzrrrrtttttxxxxxx-_

 

_I can’t do this to Nick. He doesn’t deserve this, he never deserved any of this. They’ve asked me to erase everything that’s left of this man and I’ve had my finger over the intercom to his room for the past twenty minutes. I’m supposed to call him in for a routine maintenance and then shut him down and clear his memory banks before destroying the original scans._

 

_I was hired to be a scientist. Not an executioner._

 

_-kkkzzzzzrrrrtttttxxxxxx-_

 

 _I’ve done it. I’ve saved him I hope, there’s no way to tell, but I’ve done all I can. I couldn’t let him leave with knowledge of the Institute, if anyone ever found out they’d kill me. I erased his memory banks, completely wiped the slate clean or at least to the best of my ability. The Nick that knew me… he’s mostly gone now but a part of him is still_ alive. _After wiping his memory, I re-uploaded the original files before I had to erase them. He won’t have anyone to help him through what he’ll wake up to, but I’ve known him for months now. He’s a capable man with a good heart. The Commonwealth is either going to chew him up, or he’ll survive and bear it all. Either way, I want to give him a chance. This world, what it’s become… it needs more people like him._

 

_When the coast is clear, I’m going to haul him to the trash chute. With any luck he won’t get hurt that much by the fall. By the time the rest of the Institute’s cleanup crew is here in the next few days, he’ll have wandered off. Right now, he’s sitting next to me, still deactivated for now but he’ll wake up soon._

_Nick. If you can hear me, which you shouldn’t… but just in case… Good luck out there. You’re the only Nick that’s left now- no more copies or scans as far as I know. You’re your own man, this is the only thing I can give you. I can’t really make hazel work on a YMCK lighting system, but I thought yellow was close enough. I hope you like your new eyes._

 

_Everyone has almost cleared out now. I’m going to make a break for it and see if I can get him down the chute. And as soon as that’s done, this thing is going in the fire. I just needed to get it off of my chest._

_Goodbye, Nick._


	4. Days Counting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick meets his first friend in the Commonwealth.

The scientists’ last recorded message hung in the air for the rest of the night with each subsequent rewind and replay. The only intermission consisted of Nick listening to his own voice ring out, the other  _ other  _ Nick’s voice, wondering if he was now the equivalent of an amnesiac or if this meant the previous version of him was now as dead as the one he remembered being during the nuclear blast. There was only one  familiar feeling and that was the slight ache in his face from the tense expressions he’d worn during a number of intervals during the night, having delivered quiet sobs wearing the pained visage of someone in mourning despite his face being left dry.  

 

Just as the previous Synth Nick had complained, he too had troubles sleeping and keeping himself busy. He poured over the scraps of paper he’d managed to recover, unnerved when he came across portions of interviews and finding his mental responses to the answers there had matched his previous counterparts. It made sense in theory, but it did little to comfort him when he turned his attentions to and pocketed the remains of a repair manual that was apparently applicable to the kind of ‘Synth’ that he was, his model some might say. He worked through the night, absorbing all of the information that he could, but there were still a few things that didn’t add up. There were supposed to be rooms here, sterile labs, and science equipment beyond the outdated remnants that had been forgotten. 

 

The Synth may have never uncovered the secret if it hadn’t been for his early morning wandering to keep himself from being distracted from darker thoughts in absence of sleep. It was on the third floor in the near darkness, the sun not having risen yet, where he spotted a thin line of light emerging from a seam between the wall and the baseboard. Nick took a moment to unwrap his metal hand, finding the fingers of his other hand unable to get a grip. Probing at the source of the light with his thinner digit, he was able to follow the groove up the wall and hook his fingers into it. With a grunt, Nick pried open a set of hidden doors that opened into an elevator and he was met with a grisly sight.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_ “-and there he was-” Nick recounts, “-the same guy that’d made those recordings that I’d stayed up all night listening to. Dead as a doornail with a bullet wound-” The Detective explains, tapping a metal digit above his left optic, “-right there. Doesn’t take much more than that.” _

 

_ The Detective sighs and flicks the spent bud of his cigarette into the fire, taking a moment to watch the growing flames consume and turn the rest to ash. You wait patiently for him to continue as he sniffs and shifts around to a more comfortable seating position.  _

 

_ “‘Course, I didn’t know it was him until I needed his ID card.” Nick says, “Maybe they caught him in the act, maybe he knew too much, but I don’t know why they killed ‘em. Rode the elevator down with him and found that area I was looking for down below the entire warehouse. The building up above held only minor parts of the whole operation they had going on.” He continues, “There were ID locks on every damn thing in this place, it was a high quality show they had going on down there. But once I got a little help from my scientist friend I had free reign. I grabbed a bag and stuffed it full of the essentials, those tapes, and anything else I thought I might have needed.” _

 

_ “And that’s when you headed off to that settlement you told me about?” You ask, “The first one you found in the Commonwealth with… uh… Jimmy, right?” _

 

_ “Mnn, Jim, yeah. That was a little later.” Nick responds, “I still had plenty to deal with. Y’see, the CIT at the time was beginning its transition into the Institute that we know today.” He clarifies, “And it was about time that I was done scrounging that their ‘cleanup crew’ showed up. They were coming up the stairs and I didn’t have a lot of options. So I got out of there the same way I came into this world. Right down the garbage chute.” _

 

_ “It was around that time I figured out I was immune to rads.” Nick adds, “Because ‘cleanup crew’ ended up being code for ‘plant a bomb and blow the place all to hell’. I was already hightailing it out of there and before I knew it I was lookin’ at the spitting image of the bomb that’d dropped on Boston, just a great deal smaller but the blast was enough that the place’ll still give you rads to the day.” _

 

_ “Either way, there was no going back there. And when it came to the Commonwealth, it was the only place I’d known anything about.“ The Detective recounted, “So once I found a road, I picked a direction and started walking.” _

 

 

* * *

 

 

It had been his third straight day of travel, and the only living things that Nick Valentine had met so far consisted of insects far larger than a size considered socially acceptable in his opinion. Roaches, flies, and something he couldn’t decide was a dragonfly or mosquito. At one point on his aimless journey he’d found the corpse of something that looked like it had once been a dog, but had that same mutated, sickened look as the bear that had nearly gotten him when he’d crawled out of the trash heap. If it was anything to be happy about, Nick decided that he wasn’t the weirdest thing he’d seen out here. Although he worried that the constant travelling was putting more strain on him than he realized. After walking for so long, he felt an ominous and uncomfortable clicking from his hip and knee joints.

 

With the onset of nightfall Nick had as he’d done the previous nights and found a small out of the way spot where he could simply sit and wait until daylight streamed over the horizon and hope that his legs would last him. The Synth set his bag beside him as he sat in the corner of an old wooden porch with the glowing light of his eyes the only thing that could pierce the shadow cast by the overhang above. He’d thought maybe his journey to civilisation had finally ended when he’d honed in on the silhouette of a small suburban town in the distance. Instead, he’d found everything either abandoned, boarded up, or in complete shambles. But this place was as good as anywhere to pack up for the night, knowing what was out there, he wasn’t eager to travel alone in the dark. 

Without anything else to do, Nick leaned back against the railing and cast his gaze skywards. Despite everything having turned into a wasteland, Nick would be reluctant to admit that he’d never seen the sky look prettier. And in about three and a half seconds, he’d counted every single star in his field of vision. Counting, in the past few days, had become one of his new favorite methods of distracting himself. With each passing day, Nick had slowly started to discover more and more of what he was capable of, though it did require something less than ‘human’ thinking. 

 

His thoughts became less of an ‘I wonder what this is’ and steadily began changing to ‘Analyze this’ and voila. Somehow, his systems gave him the answers he was looking for or at least, more than what he’d have known without it. He concluded that he must have had a secondary database of some kind, but it was one that wasn’t exactly easy to access if you had the mind of a human and could only really think like a human. He’d gotten the ‘analyze’ command down right, and sometimes he could even just glance at something and get it to work without actively thinking about it.

 

He’d tried prying more information out of himself, mentally picturing the creatures he’d come across, the things he wanted to know, and at one point he’d even spent an hour mumbling ‘Access file-’ and listing off a garble of numbers and letters in hopes that he’d get it to give him something. However, his efforts resulted in little more than the frustration of knowing you knew something but being unable to reach that area of your mind. It was that same level of frustration as studying all night for an exam only to feel yourself blank out as soon as the paper was put in front of you. It was even more frustrating when he found himself beginning to identify the weapon, a ‘Laser Pistol’ he’d taken from the lab, as well as the ‘Fusion Cells’ he’d shoved into his bag. However, all that his systems would give him was that the Laser Pistol was an energy based weapon, and that the Fusion Cells acted as ammo and power for the Laser Pistol. What it  _ refused _ to tell him was how they  _ fit together  _ or how they  _ worked. _ Which led to hours of aggravation in an attempt to operate it. Even  _ as _ a machine, Nick found himself lamenting why machines had to be so god damn confusing. 

 

Still, with each new experience he discovered, he found himself listing a number of new abilities that he now had access to. Being able to play holotapes, detecting radiation, analyzing objects,he supposed not needing sleep or food and water counted for something, and of course counting things that would be near impossible for a human in a matter of seconds. They might not have sounded all that impressive listed off like that, but they had been things Nick had been unable to do before now. And even though the stars in the night sky now held a quantifiable number in his mind, as did leaves or blades of grass or anything that really entered his field of vision, these numbers were so incredibly vast that the world and the answers he seeked seemed so very far from his reach.

 

 

* * *

 

 

After his days of travelling, the first sense of relief and hope that Nick had felt since waking up flooded through him, and it was because of a small, rusted suburban playground. It had been another town, left empty and abandoned like the few others that he’d passed through until he caught sight of the tattered yellow dress. It had been like a ray of sunlight, because for the first time since waking up in this dusty, parched hell he’d found someone else as alive as he was. She was hard to make out from a distance, caught in the sharp shade of a rickety tree-house that overlooked the swings and the merry-go-round. Her arms were outstretched, as if she were waiting to catch something, or found something just out of her reach. 

 

Nick fumbled for a moment, making sure his mechanical hand was properly wrapped up and out of sight. He didn’t want to startle anyone with his appearance, least of all the first living person he met who might be able to give him some form of assistance. 

 

“H-hey! Ma’am! Miss!” He called, adjusting his satchel on his shoulder and moving into a sort of half- jog. “Hello?!”

 

Nick ignored the strained clicking noises coming from his legs as he crossed the deserted street that separated him from the playground. However as he slowed, the clicking did as well. The closer he got to the woman, the bigger the sense he felt that something was very off. The woman’s twitching movements, the strange almost off-balance way that she held herself, and the strange manner in which she tried to pry at the only board in the treehouse that she could reach. When the sound of Nicks’ voice reached her, her arms dropped tentatively and she started to turn around slowly. 

 

“Ma’am? I…” He trailed off, taking a slight step back. “… Analyze.”

 

_ Analysis complete- Feral Ghoul. Mutated and irradiated humans. Dangerous.  _

 

The Synth didn’t need the final addition of the analysis to know that he was in trouble. As soon as the Ghoul had caught sight of him, it had charged at a speed he hadn’t been ready to expect. Thankfully, it appeared that his robotic reflexes were on a hair trigger because he pivoted on the spot which was just enough for the Ghoul to whip past him and hit the asphalt. He’d felt its fingers brush against his shirt, and winced inwardly thinking of the crack of the creature’s knees against the pocked, cracked road. As soon as it fell, he ran towards the playground looking to get some tactical space between himself and the Ghoul as it struggled to get back to it’s feet. 

 

Nick quickly tossed his bag to the ground, kicking it back a little ways as he braced himself for the Ghoul’s next attack. At least they seemed predictable as once again the yellow-clad Ghoul charged in his direction. This time as the Synth pivoted, he brought his elbow down onto the creature’s back. But as the Ghoul fell and was carried forward by its momentum, its grasping fingers caught on the satchel and as it rolled forward with it, the strap twisted and caught onto Nick’s leg and with a sudden flash of pain and the sound of twisting metal the Synth slammed to the ground. 

 

“Shit!”

 

And almost like a switch being shut off, the pain was gone as his systems diverted his power back to more important areas. Nick felt delirious after such a sudden shift in sensations and his eyes widened as he realized that he’d been thrown onto his back. The Ghoul was already above him, having quickly recovered from a blow that would have at least kept a normal human down. He held his hands out in front of him to brace for impact when a gunshot rang out, echoing around the abandoned expanse as the Ghoul was thrown back as a smatter of blood exploded out from its shin. There was a slight thump from behind him, and Nick’s head whipped to the side to see what it was, finding a revolver lying in the dust.

 

“Quick! Finish it off!”

 

Nick didn’t have time to look for where the voice had come from, because he quickly scrambled back and grasped for the weapon. Now this thing, he knew how to use. Frantically, he raised the weapon as the Ghoul scrambled towards him on the ground and with a pull of the trigger, the gun went off and the creature’s head jerked back as the bullet passed through before collapsing prone on top of one of his legs. The Synth sat still for a moment, holding the gun limply in his hand as he stared at the creature that had attacked him. The skin appeared to be nothing but scar tissue, warped and pocked and mutated in a way that would have made him sick if he could get sick. 

 

He let out an audible sigh of relief and let himself fall back into the dust, giving himself a moment as he looked up to the bright blue sky and the cottony white clouds that passed overhead. However, the silhouette of a small figure ducking back into the window of the  treehouse above him made him jump. He quickly sat back up again and glanced up to the structure, noting the trapdoor on the bottom and the small rope-ladder that dropped down beneath it. 

 

“Hello?” Nick ventured, looking up to the dark window.

 

There was no response. With a groan, the Synth grabbed the remains of the Ghoul and rolled it over to the side to free himself. When he tried to get to his feet, it was clear that something had gone wrong. He froze as he felt one of his legs threatening to give out on him, nearly losing his balance as it dipped down a couple of times like hydraulics on the fritz. He grasped at the rope ladder for balance, attempting to straighten his busted leg and it whirred loudly in protest. He winced,  glancing down and noting the strange way it seemed to bend. He bit his lip and inwardly cursed at himself, now knowing where all of that pain had come from. Nick was at least thankful that this body was smart enough to know when he needed to feel pain and when he didn’t- right now it would have just hindered him. He had no idea how he was going to fix this. 

 

Either way, he needed to take things one step at a time. Relying on his remaining working limbs, he tested the rope ladder and carefully made his way up high enough to push experimentally at the trapdoor that easily swung open. He was cautious, fully aware that it would be easy for anyone to get the drop on him, and hesitantly reached up through the bottom. He hauled himself up, leaning on his arms as his optics adjusted to the dim lighting. 

 

Pressed into the corner of the small room was a boy, not much older than eight or ten. His knees were drawn up to his chest, eyes bright and wide against the dark earthy color of his skin. His hair had been cropped short and his clothes, like everything else in the wasteland, were dusty and stained. He jumped and pressed himself a bit further back into the corner as Nick slowly shifted around, and the Synth halted his movements.

 

“Hey...hey. It’s alright, kiddo.” Nick assured softly, “ I ain’t gonna hurt you. I might sound a bit rough, but I promise, I don’t bite.”

 

The child seemed to relax slightly, but still hadn’t moved. He followed his line of sight, noting that he kept glancing at his hand that held the gun.

 

“Is this your gun?” The Synth prompted.

 

“Can I have it back?”

“...Sure.” Nick replied, taking the gun out of sight for a second before putting it on the floor and sliding it over to the child.

 

The boy quickly scrambled for the weapon and then returned to his corner, flicking open the chambers to check.

 

“I never said I’d give you back the bullets.” Nick added with a slight smile. “I’m not sure a kid your age needs to be carrying around something like that. You want to come down? Nothin’s going to bother you anymore.” He said, remembering the times he’d had to deal with kids like this in bad situations. “Thanks for the backup either way.”

 

“You’re a Synth.”

 

Nick paused for a moment. 

 

“How’d you know?” He asked, knowing he’d wrapped up his hand earlier.

 

“Your eyes.” The boy responded.

 

Right, Nick had completely forgotten about those. After days of travelling, he’d forgotten a lot about his appearance that he couldn’t actually look at. He hadn’t seen a mirror since his first day of waking up in this wasteland. He was still convinced that he had normal eyes. 

 

“Yeah, those kind of give it away, don’t they?” The Synth admitted, “I’m kind of new to this whole ‘Synth’ thing. The name’s Nick.”

 

“Is the Ghoul dead?”

 

Nick ran his fingers through his hair. This kid, like most kids, went straight to the point. 

 

“Yeah, it won’t be bothering us.” He answered.

 

The boy seemed to accept this answer, nodding his approval. 

 

“We can go down now.”  


	5. It's Ok

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick gets some much needed repairs and is welcomed to his first settlement.

“My name’s Jim.”

 

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Jimmy.”

 

“Not Jimmy, just Jim.” The child corrected, curiously turning Nick’s mechanical hand over in his. “Can you feel that?” He asked, poking at one of his fingers. 

 

“Hmph… kind of? It’s not exactly how you would feel it, I think.” Nick responded.

 

After he’d managed to coax the child down from the treehouse, both had taken a seat on the rusted edge of the merry-go-round. Jim was, understandably, cautious around him but his curiosity over the mechanical man had been too much to ignore. 

 

“I gotta say, kid. That was a nice shot earlier. You practice with that thing often?” Nick asked, wiggling the fingers of his exposed metal hand. 

 

Jim jumped a little bit from the sudden movement, but soon busied himself with seeing how his robotic joints worked. 

 

“My mom taught me how to use it.” The boy answered, “I’m the lookout.”

 

“Lookout?” Nick questioned, “Sounds like a big job you’ve got there. Lookout for what?”

 

“I come and wait for the groups to come back home.” Jim explained, pointing off into the wastes. “We have a town that way. But my Dad and my Mom and the others are out hunting in the  city right now. My Dad goes with them because he’s a doctor.  If I see a flare, it’s my job to go back and get help.”

 

Nick raised his head, looking back at the town behind him, noting the larger buildings off in the distance. He didn’t know what good they could find in the city, but perhaps you’d have some normal animals running the streets now that there weren’t really many people using them. Not to mention it was a pretty… morbid job for a child to act as a lookout in case his parents didn’t come back. But the good news was that there was a sort of settlement here, and that meant that there could be help right around the corner. However, he was reluctant to leave the kid alone, especially after seeing some of the things wandering the wastes. 

 

“Your old man’s a doc, eh?” Nick asked, hopeful. “I could use a doctor.”

 

Jim gave him a strange look in return.

 

“I think you need a mechanic.”

 

“So, what’s this group of yours out hunting?” The Synth asked quickly changing the subject and eventually getting his hand away from the boy and wrapping it back up. 

 

“Synths.” Jim answered simply, “And other kinds of robots. They come in from the city a lot.”

Nick felt a chill run through him, and Jim must have noticed the ways his optics had widened because the child was quick to clarify himself.

 

“Not Synths like you though!” The child insisted, “You’re weird. I’ve never  _ ever  _ seen a Synth like you before.” Jim added, “All of the robots they get go into Randal’s garage and he uses the parts. But they don’t have skin or hair. They don’t talk like you, either.”

 

“Uh-huh…” Nick said quietly, not entirely unconvinced. “You ah… seem to know a lot about Synths.”

 

“I learn all about them from Randal.” Jim said, “We-”

 

“ _ HEY _ !”

 

The sudden shout startled Nick, and he whirled around just as Jim hopped off of the merry-go-round. Just a few yards away was a small group of five individuals, two of which had strange weapons that resembled the Laser Pistol that was left in his bag. Immediately, Nick raised his hands in surrender, looking back and forth between the two gun-toting individuals as Jim made his way over and wrapped his arms around the waist of a man who had to be his father. As his son ran up to him, he immediately lowered his weapon, bending down to look his son over and make sure he was ok. 

 

“He’s fine!” Nick called over, “I’m unarmed! I was just passing through and-”

 

“Get up!” The woman, likely Jim’s mother, snapped and motioned with her weapon.

 

“Alright, I’m getting up.” The Synth complied, “My leg is injured though, so if there’s any sudden movements it’s just me falling on my...rear.” He said, censoring himself in the presence of the child. 

 

Keeping his hands raised, Nick slowly got to his feet and winced as his leg let out a loud and uncomfortable whine as he attempted to straighten it and make it hold his weight. 

 

“What were you doing here with my boy?” The woman asked, watching him down the sights of her rifle. 

 

“That’s Nick!” Jim insisted, tugging at his father’s lapels as the other man lifted him up, “He helped, there was a Ghoul and he shot it!”

 

“He shot it? I thought you said you were unarmed?” The woman spat.

 

“Tabitha.” The older man spoke up, “Look at his eyes.”

 

“I see them.” Tabitha affirmed, her hard gaze never leaving the Synth. 

 

“I am unarmed.” Nick replied calmly, trying to get the situation back under control. If there was the chance he needed to run, he wouldn’t be able to make it. “The Ghoul had me cornered. Jim shot it and dropped his gun. I finished it off and then gave the gun back to him, minus the bullets.”

 

Jim’s mother glanced over Nick’s shoulder, noting the dead Ghoul that laid limp on the ground.

 

“Jim told me you were a doctor.” Nick said, looking towards the man in question, “I’ve been wandering for days. I could use some help.”

 

The members of the group glanced towards one another and slowly,  Tabitha lowered her weapon and promptly strode past Nick to inspect the downed Ghoul as the rest of the group let their curiosity direct their actions.

 

 

* * *

 

 

A disorganized choir of crunching dust, grass, and twigs accompanied the small group as they made their way through a dense but well-walked trail. The uphill climb was difficult for Nick, but the Synth had never been happier to be in the presence of others. James, the doctor, had graciously allowed the former cop to use him for support as they trudged along.

 

“I’m telling you, Randal is going to go nuts when he sees you.” James chuckled, patting Nick’s shoulder supportively. “He’ll be able to fix you right up.”

 

“You know, I am a person and not just some sideshow.” Nick pointed out, glancing at the man next to him. “But I appreciate all the help I can get.”

 

“You do keep saying that.” The doctor agreed, “You’re a Synth, but you don’t really act like one. Or look like any of the ones we find. They’re just walking killing machines, point and shoot at anything that moves.”

 

Nick looked over to the side, watching as one of the other members of their group trudged along with a similar haul. It was, if his systems were correct, another Synth but either an earlier model or just one that hadn’t had the amount of care put into it. It looked more like a metal skeleton than anything, with pipes and tubing and compressors in place of organs. For some reason it almost seemed a little…  _ gorey _ to him. 

 

“Yeah, well…” Nick said, “ I’m not one hundred percent sure that I’m  _ all  _ Synth just yet. Until you or this Randal guy gets a good look at me, I’m going to give myself the benefit of the doubt.”

 

“Are you programmed to think you’re human or something?” Tabitha asked, giving Nick a wary gaze.

 

“...Yeah, something like that.” Nick admitted, tightening his grip on the doctor’s shoulder as the group crested the hill and began their walk down to the settlement below.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Alright.” Nick said, feeling more than a little uneasy. “Are you sure the kid should be here for this?”

 

“It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before.” Randal assured, tinkering with the contents of his toolbox.

 

“Yeah, I can see that.” Nick replied, sitting on the makeshift examination table.

 

Randal’s Garage had ended up being the still standing half of what once used to be a Red Rocket gas station that the rest of the tiny settlement had built up around. The garage was generally rather tidy, at least in the middle workspace area. Everywhere else you had robotic parts strung out like some sort of anatomical model. They were hung on walls, piled in boxes, and in varying states of assembly and disassembly including a single Synth head that still seemed to be active as every now and then one could hear a faint muffled ‘DESTROY. DESTROY.’ before it silenced itself again. Nick caught sight of an arm poking out of a box that ended in a hand not entirely unlike his own metallic one and the thought made him queasy. He supposed that the Institute had programmed something into him to make him react the same way at seeing disassembled robots as a human would other humans in a similar state. Some sort of survival mechanism. 

 

“That’s my bad. I would have spruced the place up a bit if I’d known you’d be here.” Randal apologized awkwardly. “Either way, show me what you’ve got.”

 

Nick regarded Randal for a moment before he began unwrapping his bare robotic hand. He certainly hadn’t known what to expect of this Randal person, but a teenager with a missing eye and arm hadn’t been one of them. One side of the kid’s face had been scarred to bits, looking like the result of a grenade or mine of some sort. As a result the spot where his left eye should have been was covered by a headband with a number of  magnifying glasses of different clarity could be pulled over to magnify the vision of his remaining eye. His straw colored hair was also quite patchy on one side of his face where it wasn’t able to grow. However, it was his missing arm that was the true marvel here. Through a feat of engineering and ingenuity, Randal Reed had managed to restructure a Synth arm into a prosthesis to function for his needs. 

 

“Huh.” Randal said, examining his ‘patient’s’ hand. “Almost standard Synth tech here. A little less durable actually than what these ones have.” He explained, raising the prosthesis. “What I’m really interested about is this.” He said, feeling at the torn edges of the faux skin covering. “Can you feel this?”

 

“Yeah, feels about like normal skin until you hit the edges.” Nick offered, “Then all feeling just kind of cuts out.”

 

  
Uh-huh.” Randal replied simply, “How would you know what ‘normal’ skin feels like?” He prompted, peering up at him through one of the magnifying lenses. “Because to be honest, you’d be quite a convincing human if they’d done better with the eyes.”

 

Nick felt a surge of annoyance. Of course they wouldn’t know exactly what he was, hell, he had most of the information and he hardly understood. Or rather, didn’t really want to understand at times. He was Nick Valentine, he was here, and that was what he liked to think mattered more to him than being Synth or Human. 

 

“Hand me my bag. I’ve got a few things that can explain it better than I can.” Nick huffed.

 

He thanked Jim as the child retrieved his bag for him, and he withdrew the holotapes and papers he still possessed. One by one, the tapes were played again, each one playing through his inner speakers as James and Randal slowly came to their realization. 

 

“So you’re-”

 

“Nick Valentine. Pre-war cop working for the BADTFL Regional Offices. I’ve got memories of my life all the way up until the bomb dropped on Boston and then up until a few days ago.” Nick explained, “Or rather, maybe I’ve got memories from a different me. Or maybe I’m just a copy of Nick and I don’t know who I am.” He admitted, “I’m still a little fuzzy on the semantics.”

 

“Jee-sus.” Was James’ initial reply. “I’m so sorry. So it’s this ‘Institute’ place that’s spilling these damn robots out everywhere?” He asked, “The CIT used to try to work with the Commonwealth, they disappeared a while ago when it didn’t work out.”

 

“And apparently they’re experimenting with using human consciousness as a base for AI.” Randal  added, flipping through the manual that Nick had recovered, “Assuming that you are all Synth.”

 

“That’s what I’d like to know.” Nick said, resting his head in his hand, “Figure out if there’s any piece of me left in here, or if…” Nick trailed off and sighed, “It’d also be nice if I could get my busted leg back in working order.”

 

“Well, Nicky, I’ll be happy to give you a tune-up.” Randal encouraged, “We’ll take a look in and see what’s there. Since it looks like your systems have pain receptors, I’m going to have to open up your brain case and turn those off manually so I can work on your leg.” He explained, “And if we find anything of more human nature in there, the doc and I can work together.”

 

“And  _ how  _ are you going to do that?!” Nick asked, craning his neck around to get a look as Randal made his way behind him and took his toolbox with him.

 

“Relax, you’ll be fine.” Randal assured, “Your head has two main plates to it. According to the manual here, we can just peel that covering off and open the casing back here.”

 

“People don’t normally relax when they’re being told they’re going to get their head scalped and opened up.” James pointed out, “And the vast majority of the time, they’re both asleep and not in a garage.”

 

“Pft. Surgery in a garage.” Nick huffed, deciding to sit still despite his discomfort. “Seems like the kinda situation where you’d wake up in a bathtub of ice missing your kidney.”

 

Nick only barely stopped himself from wincing when he felt the mechanic’s hands locate the seams on either side of his face right before his ears. He told himself that it would be perfectly  _ fine _ . There was no reason to panic, it was just like fixing up a car or something. The Synth had a sudden flashback to earlier memories, remembering the time he’d lost one the bolts for the tire of his car, sitting with Jenny on the side of the road after he’d gotten a flat. He’d set each one down one by one and hadn’t noticed they’d rolled away until he’d needed them.

 

“Just make sure you don’t lose anything, alright?” He asked, optics flicking to the side but unable to pick up the teenager in his peripherals. 

 

“Don’t worry about it. Right now I’m the biggest expert on Synths in the Commonwealth.” Randal assured, “Besides whoever’s building you guys, that is.”

 

A visible shudder ran through the Synth as he felt the synthetic skin on the back of his head start to peel away and he gripped the sides of the work table, hard enough that the faint whine of the hydraulics in his arms were audible. It didn’t  _ hurt _ per say, but it felt so foreign and visceral that it disturbed him. It was like peeling off a sunburn, but much thicker. After a few seconds though, all feeling from the section of covering cut off completely. 

 

“Woah, take it easy there.” James scolded, “You’re going to end up blowing out more of your parts if you keep that up.”

 

“I can help!” Jim insisted, getting up from where he’d been sorting through the boxes of parts and making his way over to Nick, ogling the open back of the man’s head as Randal went to work unscrewing the plate. “Here, do this.” He said, holding his hand up.

 

Curious and grateful for the distraction of feeling the slow grating of screws being removed, Nick raised his hand. Jim nodded in approval and pressed his own much smaller palm to his metal one and held tight.

 

“This is my job when I’m helping Dad’s patients.” He explained, “Just squeeze if it hurts, ok?”

 

“Jim, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea-” James began.

 

“ _ DAD!”  _ The child snapped with a roll of his eyes, “I  _ got  _ it. I’ve done this  _ hundreds _ of times before ok? Let me do my job.”

 

Nick had to hold in a snort at the child’s firm telling-off of his parent. 

 

“Sounds like he’s an expert on the matter.” Nick said with a slight smile, “He’s a good kid. I’ve got to say though, as a cop I’m a little more than concerned that he was left out there alone with a gun. That Ghoul might have taken  _ me _ out.”

 

James rubbed the back of his neck, averting his eyes.

 

“Normally it’s a pretty safe area to be honest.” He defended, “There aren’t really any other kids his age out here. We thought giving him a job and some responsibility would be good for him.” James explained, “We don’t normally get Ghouls out this way. They’re always out in the city, and he’s dealt with the common pests we have. Radroaches and molerats are about as bad as it gets. Tabitha’s already talked about making the patrols tighter.”

 

“Radroaches?” Nick asked, “You mean to tell me that you’ve let this kid fight those things?”

 

“The world’s a different place, Nick.” James said with a shrug, “Different from the one you remember, anyway. The radiation has changed a lot of things, the food, water, and radiation are the least of your worries. Everyone has to deal with them sooner or later and I’d rather my boy know how to handle himself no matter how young he might be.” He stated, “Although I will admit… seeing that Ghoul today was troubling. We might have to start sending him out with a partner on his lookouts from now on.”

 

Nick looked satisfied with this answer, unable to nod for the time being. However, he soon felt the chilling sensation of his head suddenly becoming much lighter as the back panel was removed. One thing he’d never hoped to experience was the feeling of a breeze against the back of his eyes. He very nearly balled his hands into a fist again before he remembered the child’s grasp. Instead, he gave Jim’s hand a very gently squeeze. 

 

“Oh wow.” Came Randal’s response and a sudden rustle of paper. “This is something.”

 

“So?” Came Nick’s impatient question, “What’s the verdict?”

 

“...I-I’m sorry Nick, but if you’re hoping for me to find bits of brain matter in here or something, I don’t see it.” Randal admitted, “It’s what you’d expect to see in a typical synth- but  _ really _ high quality. Your memory banks must be massive, as much as what a human brain can store at least. Some of this is just beyond me. You’re a real work of art when it comes to tech.”

 

However, the flattery was wasted on Nick as he felt a sinking sensation fill him. He was quiet for the rest of the ‘operation’ as switches were turned and his physical sensations faded to match the flooding sense of ominous anxiety in his mind. He hardly even commented or registered when Randal had completely disassembled his broken leg and had actually taken it off of his body. It was around this time that both Jim and James had to leave for a meal, despite Jim’s protests, and Randal insisted on replacing any potentially lower quality parts with the more durable pieces of machinery that he’d managed to collect. 

 

Nick must have given him his approval, because he spent the next few hours watching his own body parts be removed, taken apart, reassembled, and put back together. Each time it made it more and more clear to him that he’d need to accept something that he’d been trying to avoid, because the implications it held breathed down his neck like a vengeful wraith. Had he actual flesh, his hands probably would have gone clammy as he gave the thought actual weight. 

 

_ I’m a robot. _

 

_ I’m only a few days old. _

 

_ I’ve  _ never  _ been human. _

 

Nick suddenly jumped as his systems flooded with physical sensation.

 

“Oh! Sorry, should have warned you there.” Randal apologized, “Your replacements appear to be up and running. How do they feel?”

 

Feeling rather disoriented, Nick tested the joints of his arms and bent his knees a few times, rotating his feet at the ankles. It all seemed to be in working order, although it was strange to him that these new limbs, even while fitted in the same synthetic skin, felt just the same as his old ones. He supposed they were designed that way. Just parts off of an assembly line. Nothing special about them. 

 

“They work fine.” Nick replied blankly.

 

“Good. Everything else feel operational?” The mechanic asked, screwing the curved skull plate  and putting the covering back onto his head. “You’ve been awfully quiet since we started, Nick.”

 

“Yeah, sorry, it’s uh… the first time I remember having my head opened.” He replied, getting onto his feet and satisfied with being able to walk again. “I’d hate to intrude, but is there anywhere here that I might be able to put myself up for a little while?” He asked, “It’s been kind of overwhelming the past few days.”

 

“I’m sure we can find you a place.” Randal assured, cleaning up his tools, “‘Specially since you don’t take up many resources. That little fusion reactor you have in you will keep you going forever if you have it checked out when you need to.” He explained, “Talk to Tabitha, she’s the one in charge here. If you’re nice, she’ll set you up with a bed somewhere. You might not think you need to sleep, but it’s probably just not like humans need to, it’ll happen eventually, like a trance. You need some time to let your system sort and dump files you don’t need.”

 

Nick felt something in his brain click in confusion after receiving so much information.

 

“Alright.” He said simply, “Where can I find their place?”

 

“I’ll lead you there.” Randal offered, “We don’t need anyone getting spooked by you, not until Tabitha explains the situation to everyone else.” He explained, starting to lead the way. “And come back and see me again tomorrow. We’ll get that tubing on your head replaced with something not covered in duct tape.”

 

 

* * *

 

  
  


The rest of Nick’s day had been filled with strange looks, some intrigued, some fearful as he did what he could to help around the small town. Calling it a ‘town’ was a bit of an overstatement though, it contained about a half a dozen families and a handful who’d settled with the group on their own. They had gardens, some minor defenses, clean water, and appeared in need of a few extra hands. 

 

After meeting with Tabitha, who had appeared to soften slightly in comparison to their first encounter, they’d provided him with a small one room shack. It was what most newcomers spent the night in until the settlement could gather enough resources to build a proper home. Either way, it was better than spending the night under another porch stoop waiting for monsters to show up. 

 

The Synth sat tiredly against the side of the shack, relatively out of sight of the rest of the settlers but enough that he could watch some of them going back and forth with their chores. Already, the sky was beginning to darken, and out of the 2,356 stars that had been visible the night before, only 24 were visible with the orange hues of the sun still on the horizon. 

 

Nick had taken the tapes out again, playing them one by one, his volume turned down lower so he could listen to them without disturbing anyone else. He listened to the voice like his that belonged to someone who was not him anymore. The mechanical man wondered if this other Synth Nick also had the same doubts he did, and it sounded like it listening to the way the scientist spoke about him. After all, why would he act any different than he was now? They were the same person in a way, just copies of someone who’d died who knows how many years before now. It left him with desires that he didn’t think he could ever meet and thoughts that made him question the universe that he thought he’d at least had partially figured out when he still thought he was Officer Nick Valentine.

 

“You listen to those a lot.”

 

The voice had jolted him out of his reverie, and Nick turned to find Jim with an armful of worn blankets and a lantern. The Synth sighed and popped the tape out of his arm, tossing it into the satchel he’d looted from the CIT building. 

 

“How long’ve you been standing there, kid?” Nick asked, glowing optics settling on the objects the child held. 

 

“Since you started playing them.” Jim admitted, “Mom wanted me to give you these. Can you take them? My arms kind of hurt.”

 

Nick nodded and rose with a bit of exasperation to take the bundle from the boy. He opened the door to the tiny shack, just large enough for a bed and a small table, and sat the objects in their proper places. Now that Jim had made himself known, Nick was painfully aware of the child’s presence. 

 

“Uh, anything else you need, kiddo?” He asked, stepping back out and closing the door behind him. 

 

“Not really.” Jim admitted with a shrug. “I just wanted to stand out here.”

 

“You… don’t have anything better to do?” Nick asked, not unkindly, but with the obvious impression that he’d rather be left alone.

 

“No.” Jim answered plainly. “So… you used to be a person?”

 

Oh, here it was. This again. He’d been asking himself the same thing. 

 

“Well, technically speaking… no. I guess not.” Nick responded, “Mentally speaking, I’m not entirely sure.”

 

“Does that bother you?”

 

Nick looked dumbfoundedly at the kid. They weren’t going to have this conversation, he didn’t need to have this conversation, especially not with a kid. However, he was cornered, quite literally. He could just tell him to go home if he wanted, even gone to get his parents if he felt like it. But still, Jim hadn’t done anything to earn his scorn.

 

“Yeah.” Nick sighed, “Yeah it does.” He grumbled, moving back to sit in the same spot he had before. 

 

“Why?”

 

God, he’d forgotten that kids were basically little question machines. 

 

“Because…” He said, trying to think of a way to word it as simply as possible. “Because I want to be the person that I thought I was. The original Nick.” He said, feeling a bit of weight lift with his confession. “But I can’t.”

 

“Why do you want to be him?” Jim asked, the question sounded so innocent. “Was he a good person? Do you like him?”

 

Nick gave the child a strange look, wondering just what was going through his mind. However, he simply sat there and awaited his answer. He hadn’t thought about himself- or the original Nick, in such a detached manner before. He supposed it made sense, seeing as he felt so detached as he did. 

 

“Well, I guess he liked to think he was a good person.” Nick replied, “He liked to help people, did his best to do that I think. Had some bad things happen to him, but that didn’t really stop him from trying. I guess I like him, yeah.” He admitted. 

 

“That’s ok then.” Jim said approvingly. “It’s ok to want to be like someone. I want to be like my Dad when I grow up.” He said, “And we have the same name, too. Like you and Nick. They just call me Jim instead of James. So if you want to be Nick, you can. Wanting to be like someone is how people turn into people anyway.”

 

“You think so?” Nick asked, feeling a wisp of his turmoil ebbing away. 

 

The rest was still there, but pushed to the back of his mind for now.

 

“Yeah. I just wanted to make sure you knew, since you’re a robot and not a person. Lots of robots don’t know things.” Jim clarified. “But you could be a person if you wanted to.”

 

Nick let out a snort of a laugh, feeling a bit of a smile cross his face. 

 

“Well, thank you for that bit of advice.” He chuckled, “Since you’re obviously an expert on the matter. I guess I  _ am  _ a robot if I’d missed that little tidbit.”

 

“Can I tell you a secret since I helped?”

 

“Alright, change in subject, but sure.” Nick replied jokingly, “Warning you though, kiddo. The old Nick was a cop who didn’t take bribes. I don’t either.”

 

Jim appeared to be mentally weighing his options before he reached into his pockets, spilling out a number of trinkets. Some of these were familiar to Valentine, Nuka Cola bottle caps, some sort of fridge magnet, a building block, an old watch, a crumpled cigarette box, and a holotape that still looked good.

 

“I went exploring when I was on lookout.” Jim admitted, “I just went down the road and into a house that didn’t have a door. I could still looks for flares,  I just wanted to see what was inside.” He explained, “But then I heard something upstairs and I ran back to the treehouse.”

 

“So- wait. You ended up luring that Ghoul out?”

 

The child nodded shamefully. Obviously realizing the trouble he had the potential of getting into, all for a pocketful of junk. Well, they were probably treasures to the kid, but still. Nick weighed his options, thinking of telling his parents about what happened. But then again, hadn’t the poor kid been through enough? Nothing taught you better to stay out of trouble than having to deal with the consequences and having been chased and tree’d by a Ghoul seemed like punishment enough.

 

“Alright. I won’t tell anyone.” Nick promised, “But you’ve got to promise me you won’t go out exploring on your own like that again.”

 

The child’s face lit up at his answer, and he nodded.

 

“Deal. So, you can play these things, right?” Jim asked, holding up the holotape. “I never knew what they did until you played them in the garage..”

 

Nick took the tape into his own hands, looking for a label of some sort but finding nothing. He supposed he could play it, and if it ended up being inappropriate, he could just turn it off. 

 

“I guess we could give it a go.” Nick decided, popping open the player on his arm.

 

“Wait!” Jim interrupted. “Can I do it?”

 

Nick paused and considered for a moment.

 

“Alright, you're in charge here kid.” He said holding his arm over to him where Jim promptly loaded up the holotape and slammed the panel on his arm shut. “Yeow, kinda too eager there. Tone it down next time.”

 

And with a mental click, the tape began to play starting with the sound of horns. 

 

~ _ The roads are the dustiest _

_ The winds are the gustiest _

_ The gates are the rustiest-~ _

 

“Hey, I know this guy.” Nick commented cheerfully, “Used to listen to him on the radio in the car while I was driving.”

 

“You can have it if you want.” Jim offered, “I don’t have a tape player. But you’ve gotta let me listen to it sometimes, ok?”

 

“You drive a hard bargain, Jim.” Nick sighed, letting his head fall back against the outside wall of the shack. “But once again, you’ve got yourself a deal.”

 

_ ~Don’t know why I left the homestead _

_ I really must confess _

_ I’m a weary exile _

_ Singing my song of loneliness~ _

 

Jim tilted his head back and forth to the song, looking over to find the Synthetic man with his glowing eyes to the stars. His own gaze followed. 

 

“I wonder how many there are.” The boy thought aloud.

 

“Do you want to know?”

 

_ ~The love the liveliest _

_ The life the loveliest _

_ Way back _

_ Way back _

_ Way back home~ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This Chapter is dedicated to tumblr user Nick-Valentine-Fanclub, happy birthday!
> 
> Lyrics used are from Bob Crosby's 'Way Back Home'


	6. Swelter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Institute comes a-knockin' looking for a rogue synth and Nick happens to fit the description.

_ “After sort of settling down, I started becoming pretty fond of that little town.” Nick says, a bit of wistfulness in his voice, “At first I was kind of like a local celebrity, you know? Everyone wanted to see the mechanical man who'd wandered in from the dump. Eventually we got my own place built, not much bigger than the shack they set me up in, but it was enough for me.” _

 

_ “How long did you stay there?” You ask with a slight yawn. _

 

_ “Mmm..’bout six, maybe seven years.” Nick answers. “And I can see I've got you on the edge of your seat, but I don't need an internal chronometer to know you've been awake for too long. You should take some advice from your pal over there.” _

 

_ You follow the old Synth’s motioning hand, looking back to find Dogmeat lying heavy on his side letting out small snores. He'd earned his rest just as much as you both had, trekking all over Boston to track down the Eddie Winter tapes and not once leaving your side. You have to admit, you three were quite the team.  _

 

_ “Alright, fine.” You concede, putting your sleeping bag back in its proper place, “But you’re not getting off that easy.” _

 

_ “Knowing you, I wasn’t expecting to.” The old Synth counters with a slight chuckle. “Get some rest. We’ll be back in diamond city before you know it.” _

 

_ With a yawn, you turn your back to the fire and to Nick as you try to settle down to sleep the rest of the night away. But when you find yourself falling into the heavy embrace of your dream, through the dark cloud of sleep that brightened into a sickening bright haze it’s like trudging through a burning building, your hazy surroundings lit by a harsh and unforgiving light. You start to panic and feel your heart thump in your chest as you whirl around to try to find your way out. Stumbling, you push your way through the choking smog and towards a bright pinpoint of light in the distance. In a sudden burst of wind, the obscuring smoke is pushed away and you find yourself in the middle of a vast green field with bright, beautiful blue skies. In the space in front of you the corner you and Nick had visited, the one where Jenny had died, took up the area like a puzzle piece that had been forcefully fit into the wrong scene. In the distance, the warming light of the sun had been replaced entirely with the great, looming mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion put on pause.  _

 

_ You recoil in terror for a brief second, overwhelmed by the image before you hear the distant familiar tone of the Synth Detective’s voice. Attempting to hone into it, you notice a television sitting in the middle of the street corner and in front of that is the couch from your living room back in Sanctuary. Tears dot at your eyes because sitting on that couch is your spouse and you don’t even need to see anymore than the back of their head to know that it’s them. Your voice rings out, calling their name and you can’t help yourself but to run to them. You’re a fraction of the way there when they turn around to peer at you, and their face lights up in the smile you know so well. By the time they stand and you see your baby, your boy Shaun in their arms you’re almost halfway and the tears blur out your vision.  _

 

_ Suddenly, you screech to a halt as you catch sight of a figure rising from behind the piles of rubble and threateningly make its way around to the couch where your spouse is distractedly waving at you. Screaming their name, you tell them to look, to run away, to do anything as you attempt to close the distance as quickly as you can. But by now the Ghoul Eddie Winter has already snatched a handful of your baby’s blankets, trying to pry him away from your spouse. You know what happens next, because it’s a mirror version of what happened in Vault 111. A gunshot goes off, and you see your spouse fall and now Eddie Winter is running off with your baby. _

 

_ It’s too late though, and you drop to your knees when you reach the makeshift living room on the corner. The pain is almost overwhelming, and you reach out a trembling hand to stroke the hair of your former spouse, hoping blindly that they would wake up. _

 

_ “Don’t worry, we’re going to find your boy.” _

 

_ The voice is filled with static, like a signal just out of focus,but you recognize it as Nick’s again. You turn your head slowly, looking to the television where a black and white movie is playing. It’s dark in the scene, a beautiful young woman sitting on the side of a large wooden desk and the only thing brightening the room are the slats of light filtering in from the blinds on the back wall and the strangely yellow eyes of the man sitting behind the desk. He stands up and walks around the desk and the woman follows, they get close enough to the camera that soon they’ve completely stepped out of the television- still in black and white save for the man’s glowing optics.  _

 

_ “I promised you, I’d help, didn’t I?” Nick asks, “But first, we have to track down Eddie Winter.” _

 

_ You stare at the man with Nick’s voice. He doesn’t look like Nick, not the Nick you know at least, and instead looks more like how a detective in the movies might look. This Nick is human and when he offers you a hand to help you up, he feels very much flesh and blood save for those eyes. They used to frighten you now and then in the darkness of some of the pre-war buildings, but now they felt comforting because they belonged to a friend.  _

 

_ “He...he killed them.” You manage to choke out, “He shot them right in front of me.” _

 

_ “I know. The bastard gunned down Jenny too.” He responds with a pained look on his face as he motions to the ground and reaches into his pocket for a cigarette. “We need to go, there’s not much time left.” _

 

_ You look down, finding that the body of your spouse is gone. In their place lies the black and white TV woman in a set of chalk lines and a pool of blood. You blink in surprise and suddenly a great roar fills your ears as the nuclear explosion in the distance flares brightly. You try to run, but Nick is holding your wrist too tightly and the explosion is rushing towards you both. In an instant, the brightness tears you apart layer by layer. You watch Nick’s face as skin flutters off like ashes, revealing metal underneath. Your own hands dissolve away into metal skeletal synth hands and all that exists is brightness and noise. And you hear Nick’s voice again.  _

 

_ “Shit!” You curse as you wake with a start. _

_ Nick knelt next to your side and recoiled slightly, when you could register something besides the sweat on your back and the clamminess of the dew that coated you overnight you feel guilty. He probably thought he’d started you with his less than human appearance. You lick your lips and sit up, cradling your head in your hands to recover from the nightmare you’d suffered.  _

 

_ “You doing alright?” Nick ventured, keeping a respectable distance. “Started yellin’ and struggling around in your sleep. Figured you weren’t exactly on cloud nine.” _

 

_ “Hit the nail on the head with that one, Detective.” You say, taking a deep breath to recover, “Thanks, buddy.” _

 

_ You blindly reach out to pat the shoulder of your Synth companion and you know you don’t have to look at him to feel the approving smile. He takes a cigarette from the box in his pocket and raises his metal hand to the end, snapping his fingers just right for the metal to produce the spark it needed to light.  _

 

_ “Well, glad you’re doing better.” Nick responds, “Dogmeat was getting worried.” _

 

_ At the sound of his name, you look up and find your first companion waiting patiently on his paws. The dog’s  ears are perked from hearing his name and his tail moves from a slow swish to a rapid wag as you both make eye contact and he bolts over to your side, rubbing against you and whining in concern as he presses his wet dog nose against your face.  _

 

_ You blow air out from your lips as Dogmeat licks your face a little too close to your mouth, and you run your hands through the animal’s fur to placate him. Feeling he was getting a little too hyperactive, you gently shove the dog off of you and Nick offers a hand which you gladly take as he helps you to your feet. It isn’t flesh and blood this time, but it’s better in a way. It isn’t long until you’re packed up and on the road again.  _

 

_ “So-” You start, looking towards Detective Valentine expectantly after having traveled in silence for a while, “-we left off with you at the town.” _

 

_ “You know, we’re pretty far past the part when the bombs dropped.” Nick points out, “You said you wanted to figure out if we might’ve seen each other around before the war. I think that was ended with a solid  _ maybe.”  _ He concludes, “I don’t think any time after that is going to help you much.” _

 

_ “Yeah.” You say, “But that’s your fault you kept talking. Now I’m interested.” _

 

_ “And why is that?” He asks, giving you an amused look. _

 

_ “Because, you haven’t gotten to the best part yet.” You counter with a smirk.  _

 

_ “And what, pray tell, is that?” _

_ “When I rescue you, of course.” _

 

_ At this, Nick lets out a breathy sounding laugh and you can see the parts in his face moving from the holes in his artificial skin. He shakes his head good naturedly and looks over to you as he takes the cigarette from his mouth. _

 

_ “Well, that’s got to be the funniest joke I’ve heard all week.” He responds, “Why don’t you try telling me something this time instead?” _

 

_ “Oh, and that’s so exciting.” You say sarcastically, rolling your eyes at him, “I can tell you all about going through school and college and getting married and having a baby together and being frozen for 200 years and…” You trail off for a moment before making a ‘pfft’ noise of dismissal. “Trust me, Nick. You’re living my adventure with me right now. I told you how it started, and we’ve been working together since then. I want to hear about you, and if not I can open my own case files.” You threaten lightly, splaying your hands out in front of you. “‘The History of the Mysterious Valentine’, I can track down some Ghouls who’ve been around for a while and get them to spill the beans, or you can save me the trouble.” _

 

_ “Alright, alright.” The Synth says, and you feel as if he caught the near crack in your voice when you thought of your spouse being killed. “You’re asking me to summarize quite a few decades or so, you know.” _

 

_ “We’ve got a long way to walk.” You point out, wanting to distract yourself from your thoughts. “I have time.” _

 

_ “Well, guess I don’t have much of a choice, do I?” Nick says with contented sigh, “Well. The town wasn’t much of an exciting place looking back on it in comparison to what I’ve seen since then.” He begins, “But there are a couple times in particular that I’ve kept in mind. You’ll get a kick out of those.” _

 

 

* * *

 

  
  


The day had been unnaturally hot, or at least, Nick assumed it had to be because nearly everyone in the settlement had retreated to the shade. Their human skin was slick with sweat and heat wove up in waves from the pavement. The Synth couldn’t really tell personally, as his inner workings had diverted the necessary attention to his cooling systems which kept him relatively cold to the touch. 

 

He liked to think in the past year that he’d improved greatly in how he’d adapted to his new existence, his body in particular. Human memories of a human body had helped him, he’d admit, because the Institute did build him with the intent of a human mind piloting a Synth body. A year ago the inability to breathe had disturbed him, but now he equated the feeling of regulating his coolant systems to the outmoded action. Even when there was something wrong with his inner parts, he was able to effectively identify the problem. His power source was his ‘heart’, filtration systems were his ‘liver’, the large amount of twisted piping in his gut his ‘intestines’, and it helped that they were all built in the same place because if he ever encountered any problems he could easily identify them.

 

However, where he’d been blessed with systems that kept him at peak physical comfort, his fellow settlers weren’t faring as well. The Synth had seated himself in the shade of the tree that held the treehouse where he’d found the first living human he’d known since leaving the Institute. He sat back to back with the same human, Jim, as they waited for any sign of a flare that signaled danger for their scavenging group. Jim leaned back against him, finding his companion one of the few saving graces in the heat, cooled and made mostly of metal as he was. 

 

It was thanks to the child that Nick had found himself welcomed into the little settlement. It had started when James had asked him to accompany the child on his job as lookout. He’d saved the child once already, and he figured that they’d both have something valuable to teach each the other by working together. With an older, more capable adult looking over him as well, they could more safely quell the child’s curiosity if he suggested exploring one smaller building or another.

 

It reminded Nick of his pre-war memories when coworkers would bring in their kids.  They’d always be all over him because of course he wasn’t just any old cop- he was a detective. He’d always done his best to treat kids with a certain level of respect, mostly because he remembered how frustrating it was to not be taken seriously when you were a kid. Had things gone through with Jenny, he might have even seen himself as a father. But when tragedy hit, the idea hadn’t occurred to him again and it wasn’t something he could see happening and especially not now as a robot. But he supposed he’d end up having his fair share of ‘parenting’ anyway when it came to looking after Jim. 

 

After their first few weeks of accompanying one another, Jim had invited him from to come to dinner with he and his family. It had been easily one of the most awkward experiences of his life. Being both unable to eat and not needing to, he sat with an empty place setting in front of him as the boy’s parents attempted to make light conversation. They were good people, but at the time he could tell that they were having a hard time figuring out how to even look at him. Human? Synth? He was some strange in-between thing that could be a friend or something like the robots they faced when out hunting.

 

Despite the uncomfortable first family dinner he’d attended, Jim continued to invite him along and Nick obliged. The child had easily claimed the mechanical man as his best friend and Nick found himself accompanying the boy wherever he decided to go because otherwise isolation or letting Randal look over him like a science experiment in his garage were the only options. It was through Jim that he soon became acquainted with the rest of the settlers and why the settlers had started viewing him as more than just a Synth. After a while, Nick felt comfortable offering to help out around the settlement on his own, getting to know the others and finding their presence welcome. Before long, the mechanical man had slipped into the settlement, became one of them, and was welcomed. Dinner with Jim’s family became a tradition.

 

“Nick? Can’t you get colder or something?” Jim complained, slumping against his back, “It’s too hot out.”

 

“Sorry kid, you’re outta luck in that department.” Nick said, rolling a cigarette around in his lips, he kept them un-lit around Jim since he knew exactly what they could do to you. “Coolant systems are as good as they’re going to get right now. If I make it any colder on myself the heat won’t counteract it and I could freeze out my tubing. Last time I checked, I didn’t look like an air conditioner, even if we are distant cousins.”

 

“What’s an air conditioner?” Jim asked, “Is it a pre-war thing?”

 

Nick nodded in response, he and Jim often sat swapping stories to pass the time. It was mostly Nick talking about what life was like before Boston became the ruins known as the Commonwealth. But for every story he told from before the war, Jim had one to tell too and it was mostly due to this that Nick knew as much as he did about the Commonwealth, or at least the dangers that it held. He didn’t know what it was with kids and their strange fascination with things that could kill them. Pre-war kids loved dinosaurs and ferocious animals like lions. Kids now seemed obsessed with feral Ghouls and Deathclaws. 

 

Suddenly, the sound of running boots against asphalt distracted Nick from his train of thought and he quickly raised his weapon. The revolver felt natural in his hand, compared to the Laser Pistol he’d swapped Jim for it. However, recognizing one of the settlers from the hunting party, he lowered his weapon and pushed himself to his feet. 

 

“What’s going on?” He asked, concerned, “Did something go wrong? We haven't’ seen a flare.”

 

The settler shook her head.

 

“We’ve got a whole different problem, Nick.” She said, wiping the sweat from her forehead with a sleeve. “Ran into a couple guys traveling with some Synths.”

 

“Travelling with them? So these can’t be the typical ones you’re dealing with when you run into them in the city.” Nick guessed, “What’d they want?”

 

“Yeah, they were travelling with them but they aren’t like you, Nick. They’re not alive the same way you are.” The settler explained, “Weird thing is, they look like you almost. Same kind of eyes, same kind of skin and panels. No hair though, and they don’t wear anything.” She described, “But the two guys that were with them, they were asking about you. Wanted to know about the ‘Mechanical Man’ they heard rumors of.”

 

Nick felt a sense of uneasiness come over him. He hadn’t been exactly subtle with what he was around other people, there wasn’t a good way to even try to be subtle about it when you had glowing eyes. Travelers came and went, trading caravans passed through, and there were always the stray raiders that caught sight of him out in the city when he wasn’t on lookout duty with Jim.

 

“Do I even have to ask where they came from?” Nick sighed, “So, what? I gotta go into hiding or something? I don’t want to bring you all trouble.”

 

“That’s the plan.” She replied, “I’m going to stay here and be lookout while the rest of the group stalls. You and Jim head back to town. Grab what you need if anything and maybe leave town for a few days and camp out elsewhere. Someone back at the settlement will have advice on where to go.”

 

The Synth nodded and holstered his gun. With a wave, he beckoned Jm to follow him back to the town.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Oh no…” Nick whispered to himself, peering out from behind the cover of one of the settlements outlying houses. 

 

Apparently, the Institute had sent more than just one group of their lackeys out to find him. Two humans and a single Synth appeared to be going from settler to settler, likely asking about him. He hoped that they had enough of the right mind to insist that they hadn’t heard of him or at least to not tell them his name. They looked like they weren’t faring too well in the heat either, noting their dark colored clothing and the sheen on their foreheads while their mindless Synth bodyguard stood at their beck and call. 

 

Even from a distance, Nick felt almost personally insulted by the presence of this other Synth. The female settler had been right when she’d told him that these weren’t like the skeletal things they’d often fought. They looked just like him, in fact, maybe even right down to the facial mold. It didn’t help that they paraded the thing around without clothes on, while it was easy to assume, they didn’t need to let everyone know about his lack of certain human anatomy. 

 

“This isn’t good.” He muttered, “Looks like my house isn’t an option. I’ll have to find a way to sneak around to Randal’s garage and hope he has what I need.”

 

“I could get it for you.” Jim offered, peeking around the corner and wrinkling his nose at the sight of the other Synths, “They probably won’t pay attention to me.”

 

“Thanks for the offer, bucko, but I doubt that’ll fly.” Nick responded, making his way around to the other side of the house. “If I’m going to be out for a few days, I’ll need to haul along some extra ammo and a few jugs of coolant for replacement if the weather stays as hot as it is. Otherwise these systems are fried.” He explained, “But I’ve got another idea if you’re willing to run interference. See if you can let the rest of the settlers know about what’s going on. Get whoever’s willing to stall them while I go and talk to Randal. With any luck, he’ll be willing to be our ‘Mechanical Man’ with that arm of his. Hopefully they’ll just think that the rumor got twisted.”

 

With a plan in place, the child and Synth parted ways. Nick took the long way around the town, keeping out of sight in order to sneak into the shadows of the partially collapsed gas station that functioned as Randal’s workshop. When he was sure no one was near enough to notice, he discreetly slipped inside and was greeted with the constant breeze of about a dozen salvaged fans all focused on the mechanic.

 

“Oh, hey there, Nicky.” Randal greeted, leaning over a workbench and working on his mechanical prosthesis. “What’s up? The heat hasn’t gotten to you, has it?”

 

“Not yet.” Nick answered, reaching up to close the garage door. “Looks like you’re doing your best to stave it off.”

 

“All the fans really do is cycle around the air, it’s not perfect but it’s better than what everyone else is dealing with.” Randal said, “Actually, you wanna keep that door open for me? Otherwise it’s going to get stuffy in here.”

 

“I would, but we’ve got some problems and I’d feel better with a door being between me and them.” The Synth explained, relaying the news of Institute agents having made their way to the settlement. “I need to grab a few things that could keep me running for a couple of days if something went wrong.”

 

“Alright, let me grab a bag and we’ll get something together for you ASAP.” Randal responded, abandoning his work to help him prepare. “There should be a couple jugs of coolant over there on the shelf, make sure you-”

 

Both men suddenly froze as they heard the garage door clang open, but were promptly relieved when it only opened high enough to let in Jim. The child promptly let the door drop carefully behind him before he ran up to Nick and tugged at the front of his shirt.

 

“Nick, you gotta go now!” He ushered, “They’re on their way right now! One of the others talked to the people about the Synth stuff here in the garage!” 

 

The Synth had no idea how he was going to get out of this one. He made his way over to the nearest window and picked out the figures approaching from the distance. Nick saw as another figure  seemed to make their way over to intercept them, possibly to act as a distraction. Still, he couldn’t make his way out of the garage without being seen at this point, and as far as he saw, there wasn’t anywhere he could hide either.

 

“No dice. If I make a break for it now, they’ll see me and there’s no telling what they’d do to the rest of you.” Nick said, feeling a strange tightness in his chest. His panic must have been affecting his power consumption. 

 

“So, we’ll have to give them a robot then.” Randal suggested, looking to Nick.

 

The Synth ran the fingers of his metal hand through his artificial hair. The mechanic was right, he’d have to turn himself over and hope then that there’d be a chance for him to make a run for it later when the settlement wouldn’t have to take the fall for harboring him like some fugitive. That was assuming they didn’t just shoot him dead on the spot- they’d already given someone the orders to kill him once, and he doubted they were the kind to leave open their loose ends. And who was he to ask these people to give up anything for him? They were people, they’d been born into this world doing their best to survive and he was little more than a piece of hardware that was good at pretending to be one of them.

 

“You’re right.” Nick admitted, “Look, whatever happens, I-”

 

“I think you misunderstand me.” Randal interrupted, “They’re looking specifically for a Synth. But  _ we’re  _ going to give them our ‘Mechanical Man’ and hide our Mister Valentine in plain sight.” A hint of a smirk played on the mechanic’s face as he picked up a roll of duct tape and pulled a piece off with an audible rip. “We don’t have a lot of time. Jim, grab whatever you want out of these bins.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“They’re never going to buy this.” Nick groaned.

 

“It’s the best bet we have at this point. Here, let me put this on.” Randal insisted, “And mess up your hair some, if you’re going to be a crazed Ghoul, you have to look the part. And keep your voice scratchy.” He directed, “Jim, you take your Rad-X yet? Do it now, we’ll need that. Nicky, if you start feeling strange just take it easy. I’ll have everything back in place where it belongs soon enough.”

 

Randal quickly shut the panel on the Synth’s exposed chest and rapidly fastened the buttons to his shirt  and taped on a large unwieldy metal plate before he stepped back to admire his handiwork. Jim held his hands over his mouth, looking like he was trying hard not to laugh. In the past number of minutes, the mechanic and Jim had just duct-taped as many robotic looking pieces to Nick as they possibly could, as well as anything else metal and pointy including forks and spoons. What they ended with was what looked like what would have happened if Frankenstein’s Monster had been created out of the remains of a hardware store. Random bits of tube and piping hung from here and there, wires entangled him underneath hastily fastened metal plates, and his robotic hand was unrecognizable as it looked like they’d taped an entire drawer’s worth of cutlery to it and by looking at it no one could think there was even a real hand underneath it. A shoddy cracked visor had been placed in front of his optics, and any obvious seams in his synthetic skin had been disguised in some way or another with the hodge-podge of spare parts and junk that had been strapped onto the poor Synth. 

 

Of course, the best part was that they’d done their best to smudge as much grease and rust onto his face and exposed skin in a vague attempt to pass him off as a Ghoul underneath all of that. Randal had loosened one of the bits of tubing that led from his systems that regulated his power source in his chest- a small fission reactor, which allowed a certain amount of radiation feedback to leak out into his immediate vicinity. Nick was quite sure he’d end up dying like this, but had he told himself months ago that this is how it would end, he would have gotten a laugh out of it. 

 

“If you’re not busy, maybe you could also do some digging around in my brain and turn off whatever amount of dignity I have left.” Nick grumbled, “I’d do it myself, but you’ve duct taped an entire kitchen onto my hands.”

 

Nick was cut short, however, as the sudden banging of a fist knocking on the garage door sent an uneasy silence through the room. Even the clanging noises from the robot’s impromptu disguise seemed to soften in the presence of the Institute so near. The three of them exchanged nervous glances as they took their positions, Nick on the floor and slumped against the wall, and Jim sorting through the parts boxes. Randal made his way over to the door to open it. 

 

“You’re going to be fine, Nick.” Randal assured quietly with what was definitely a forced smile and a very unconvincing tone. 

 

“Jim, plug your ears.” The Synth instructed before looking to Randal, “I swear to whatever’s out there, if Synths can have ghosts, I’m going to haunt your ass if I die like this.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

_ “Oh my god.” You say, your face almost hurting from the smile plastered on your face. “And it worked, right? I mean, you’re here now.” _

 

_ “And they call me the Detective.” Nick chuckles, “Yeah, we all ended up making it out alright.” _

 

 

* * *

 

 

“What the hell is that?”

 

“That? Well that’s got to be the ‘Mechanical man’ you guys have to be looking for, right?” Randal answered, standing to the side as the Institute agents and the other Synth entered his garage. “At least, that’s what we call him. Ol’ uh, Tracy here is pretty sick. We just kind of let him do what he wants.”

 

Nick gave what he hoped looked like a weak-looking wave.

 

“We had reports of a Synth in the area.”

 

“Well, then you’ve come to the right place.” Randal said, “I’ve got parts from all sorts. You uh… fellas make them, don’t you?”

 

“We do.” One of the agents answered, wandering over to one of the boxes to peer inside. “We apologize for any trouble they might have caused you. We often leave them for field testing and they tend to… malfunction and wander off.” He said, looking at the boxes of Synth parts in disgust. “Either way, we’ll send word to our superiors. You won’t find them wandering the area anymore.”

 

It seemed to Nick that the heat was getting to everyone, even the Agents. They looked like they were the living example of the word ‘pissed’ but were forced to keep their composure under the command of the Institute for whatever reason. Maybe they weren’t looking to build a bad reputation just yet, they probably didn’t need rumors circulating around about wiping out an entire settlement. He supposed they’d been out searching for him for ages in the sweltering Commonwealth, and finding a ‘Ghoul’ tressed up like a garbage heap was the opposite of what they wanted. Not to mention a gifted mechanic that had managed to make sense of their technology and use it for his own. 

 

Nick stiffened as the other agent wandered over to him and knelt down. Had his mouth the ability, it would have gone dry. He felt his systems running on high as he met the gaze of the other Synth through the obscuring visor, noting nothing in its cold, unfeeling expression as it seemed to regard his presence. 

 

“Uh, hey.” Nick croaked, doing his best to keep a scratchy, ill sounding voice. 

 

“Hello.” The agent answered simply. “It must be insufferable in the heat under all of that.” He said, “Even for a...Ghoul?”

 

“You ain’t much in the looks department yourself neither.” Nick retorted, feigning a few muffled coughs. “ S _ hit _ .” He said, jumping slightly with a number of clangs as the other Synth stepped forward, nearly between himself and the agent. 

 

“Sir. I’ve detected an abnormal amount of radiation coming from this subject.” It stated in a monotonous voice, “Please exercise caution.”

 

The agent quickly withdrew from Nick, noting his fear towards the other Synth. That seemed to be proof enough to him. After all, why would a Synth have fear towards one of its own kind?

 

“You should keep an eye on your Ghoul.” He directed Randal, “It’s irradiated. If you’re not careful he’ll turn feral overnight, I suggest you put it down. Can’t believe they sent us all the way out here for a damn Ghoul covered in junk.”

 

“Don’t worry about it. Y’all just mind your own business.” Randal advised, narrowing his eye slightly. “Anyway, we done here, fellas?”

 

“We’re done. Yes.” The agent confirmed, “If you do hear of any  _ actual  _ Mechanical men, be wary.” He warned, “There’s a rogue model not unlike the one I have here with me that has been wandering the Commonwealth for as long as this past year. It is likely dangerous and  will be more intelligent than any Synth you’ve seen. It knows how to lie and will do so to incite trust. Don’t believe it.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

_ “I was a lot more careful about letting people see me after that.” Nick says, the lapels of his trenchcoat ruffled by the wind, “Not only did they manage to track me down to that settlement in the middle of nowhere, but they were already spreading rumors about me.” He explains, “I kept inside when travelers passed through, started wearing shades to cover my optics if I went with the groups into the city. The Institute came back a few times after that, but it was always ‘Tracy the Ghoul’ that was waiting there, so they just stopped coming. Chalked it all up to rumor and nothing more.” _

_ “And definitely not a Synth pretending to be a Ghoul pretending to be a robot.” You add with what could be described as an insufferable grin.  _

 

_ “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up.” Nick scoffs, straightening his hat, “But you’re not innocent of ridiculous getups either,  _ Silver Shroud _.” _

 

_ Man,  _ that _ whole journey was an adventure and a half. _

 

_ “Alright, alright.” You say, holding your hands up in surrender. “It sounds like you had it nice there, though. Friends, a mechanic that could get you fixed up, and it sounds better than Diamond City treated you. What was it that made you leave?” _

 

_ Nick thought about that for a good few moments, rolling the cigarette between his teeth as he kept his optics looking ahead. You knew he was a person who held his words like a pistol. Sometimes he took a long, hard look at what he was trying to say before delivering and other times he’d snark like he was shooting from the hip. Either way, he tended to hit his target.  _

 

_ “I guess it’s easiest to say that I was afraid.” Nick admits, finally coming up with an answer that he deemed acceptable. “Being a Synth, I got used to certain things pretty early on. But sometimes the long-term things don’t quite hit you until you reach ‘long term’.” He explains, “I stayed in that settlement for around a decade or so. In that time I saw Jim go from waist height to taller than I was. All around me people were having kids, getting grey hair, and just getting older in general. And there I was, Nick the Synth looking just the same as I did when I first walked into town. It’s kind of a scary thing to realize that everything around you’s changing and you’re just stuck as you are.” _

 

_ “Tell me about it.” You sigh, looking at the ruined landscape around you.  _

 

_ “Guess we were in the same boat around that time, weren’t we?” Nick says more than asks.  _

 

_ “Yeah. Guess we were.” _


	7. Setting Sail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ever wonder how Nick got those holes in his neck?

The settlement’s lights blazed bright throughout the night  for the first time in Nick’s memory. Strings of lightbulbs had been put up between houses and strung up on the trees, and a large bonfire area had been cleared in the center with rickety tables and homemade wine surrounding it. It had snowed the night before and there was a chill nip in the air, but that didn’t deter the settlers from going out and having a good time. It almost reminded the Synth of a pre-war Christmas, despite the fact that no one really celebrated that these days, there were similar festivities, but none as big as this.

 

It had been explained to him that every decade or so, neighboring settlements would join up together for a few weeks. It was a rare celebration, as moving an entire group of settlers across the Commonwealth was a dangerous task, but it was incredibly important for their moral and survival. It was a way for people to get to know each other, and a place for new families to begin. Single men and women could catch the eye of whomever took their fancy and party the night away. In the end, some would decide to stay and settle down, and others would leave their original settlement for a new one. Without the dangerous trip, settlements risked dying out and stagnating.

 

Nick sat near the bonfire, preferring to keep himself at least a little warm or otherwise risk his coolant systems freezing up and busting the tubing. However, he was an outlier even in the celebration, a couple of times he’d have the occasional individual catch sight of him sitting alone and attempt to flirt only to be greeted with the sight of his glowing optics. He understood when they would rescind their romantic interest but he appreciated when those curious would accompany him for a while to talk or even make a request for music. Without much else to do the Synth had designated himself as the settlement’s temporary disk jockey with the collection of holotapes he’d managed to discover over the years. He’d take a tape from the pile sitting on the table next to him, insert it into his arm, and smile at the whoops and hollers of approval as he turned his volume up and leaned back as others started dancing.

 

“Hey Nicky V, been awhile since you’ve seen a party, huh?”

 

Pulling up a chair, Jim made himself comfortable, a bottle of beer in one hand and already looking a slight bit buzzed. If it weren’t for his internal clock ticking down the days since his activation, he would have insisted that the young man next to him had been only around ten years old a week ago. He was only eighteen, but by the standards of the world now, he was easily considered a healthy and capable adult.

 

“Can’t really say I ever remember going to a party like this one. Old Nick doesn’t either, at least not one that he didn’t bust up.” The Synth answered with a chuckle. “Crazy kids and their backwoods parties. Who knew one day you’d all depend on them, huh?” He said, nudging him with an elbow, “Where’ve you been anyway? Not gettin’ into too much trouble I hope?”

 

“Nah, I’ve been helping Randal out in his garage.” Jim replied, “He’s still trying to get that old pre-war motorcycle and side car running since he doesn’t really have the Synth parts to mess around with anymore since they stopped showing up as much.” He explained, “According to him he reckons all he needs for it is some power source.”

 

“Well good luck with finding something compatible.” Nick said, leaning back. “Those things ran on nuclear motors, not much different from what’s in me.” The Synth replied, tapping his chest, “Don’t know if he can even ride it anyway. Or where he’d even go with it.”

 

“Mmm.” Jim hummed in response, taking a swig of the bottle he’d brought with him. “I don’t know where he’d go, but...I’m actually kind of thinking about heading back with one of these other settlements myself, you know?” He admitted suddenly, “It’d be nice to get out of town for a while. I’ve been living in the same ten square miles my entire life.”

 

Nick’s optics flicked over to his friend, there was a sort of tenseness in his posture that he couldn’t quite place. He could tell that they were about to have a more serious conversation. Jim had just been waiting for an opening to say it.

 

“You talk to your parents about that?” Nick asked, lacing his fingers together- one metal and one not quite. “I’ve seen you and that one girl talkin’ it up an awful lot the past few days.”

 

“Yeah, we’ve talked about it and they’re alright with it. I mean, it’s not like I’m going to leave forever.” He scratched the back of his head awkwardly, “It’s… I do want to start thinking about having a family, you know?”

 

“That’s quite a big thing to start thinking about at your age.” Nick replied, looking a little surprised, “Hell, you’re not even supposed to be drinking at the age you’re at. Not like there’s any laws to stop you anymore.”

 

“I don’t know, Nick. Things aren’t like they were back when you remember.” He said, “People don’t live to be eighty no more, hell, we don’t even die of old age most of the time. We get sick, we get shot, we get blown up and most of the time we’re barely older than my age when it happens. I just want to do something with my life before I don’t have it anymore, you know? If you hadn’t come along when you did when I was a kid I might not even be here. Least I can do is give my parents some grandkids.” He sighed, “They’re gettin’ older, Nick. And here you are not lookin’ any different than we met. How old’re you supposed to be? Counting the memories you already got.”

 

Nick merely nodded in agreement. Jim was right, of course, things weren’t how they used to be. And he’d noticed more than anyone how the passage of time hadn’t seemed to affect him like it had everyone else and the thought had started to make him uneasy. He was a machine, he didn’t ‘age’ the same way he was used to people doing. So long as he kept finding parts and could replace whatever went wrong, he’d keep going like any other machine would. Even the reactor in his chest could be replaced. Ever since Jenny died, he’d been astoundingly aware of his own mortality, unlike most of the populace who took things day to day. But now he’d been rendered something next to immortal, but not invulnerable. The thought of watching Jim grow old, even past his own ‘physical’ age that he was built at, made him uneasy. It had always been a bittersweet fact of life that if you raised a kid, the best way to leave this world was to die of old age before they did.

 

“Supposed to be going on forty five or so.” Nick admitted, resting his cheek on his hand. “It’s strange, feeling it but not having the rest of you match it.”

 

They both sat quietly for a while, Nick put in a new holotape and observed the party going on around him, not quite feeling a part of it as much anymore.

 

“So when are you leaving?” Nick ventured to ask.

 

“I don’t know, guess I’ll head back when the rest of them do.” Jim replied, “If it doesn’t work out, then I’ll just head back here and figure out something else.”

 

“You wouldn’t mind a travelling buddy, would you?” Nick asked, reaching around in his pocket for his pack of cigarettes, “Because personally I’d feel a hell of a lot better knowing someone’s got your back.” He said, freeing a smoke from the box, “And I think it’s about time I saw more of this place myself.”

 

Jim couldn’t help but to smile at that.

 

“I was hoping you’d offer.” He admitted, “You think you’ll be okay without Randal?”

 

“Bah, at this point I could fix myself if I needed to.” Nick replied, “ Besides, it’d probably give your folks some peace of mind.”

 

The young man seemed satisfied with his answer, leaning back in his chair and taking another swig of his drink as he watched the glowing sparks from the fire flitter up to join the stars above. Reaching down next to him, Jim pulled out another bottle and held it over to the Synth.

 

“Hey man, cheers.” He said, offering it, “Ain’t nowhere to go but forward.”

 

Nick regarded the bottle for a moment before grabbing it with a slight scoff.

 

“What? You can drink stuff, can’t you?” Jim asked, “I seen you doing it before.”

 

“Yeah, for my emergency energy system if my reactor goes kaput.” Nick pointed out, “It’s for a fuel source, not necessarily anything I can fit down my gullet.” He said, opening the beer anyway, “This stuff’s got the alcohol content of water. It’ll take days to even process this.”

 

Either way, with a clink of their bottles, both took a swig of their respective drinks.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

For a week and a half after the celebration, rain poured down over the commonwealth instead of snow. The white blanket that had covered the ground the week before had turned to slush and then a thick, soupy, irradiated mud that made stepping outside a difficult task. Not that it hadn’t already been difficult anyway- the water that fell was irradiated and without a large enough supply of Rad-X or Radaway the settlers from all towns had to bunk up with what space was available. Nick had even given up his own small home to those who’d needed it, the bed was mostly there for comfort purposes anyway, and he took up temporary residence in the garage.

 

Travel in these conditions would risk sickness or even death, supplies were beginning to run low due to the amount of people boarded up with them, and running out to grab supplies was risky business. Nick had taken on the responsibility of visiting each residence due to his immunity to rads, doing his best to find out what they needed, and doing his best to divvy up the supplies they had before trudging out back through the irradiated rain. The people he’d known for the past number of years were as courteous as ever towards him, but from house to house he’d notice some wary glances and contemplative looks that bordered on aggression.

 

The Synth had done his best to brush it off but still he still felt a little unnerved by the air of dislike that followed him in some areas. He knew that there weren’t many, or possibly any, more Synths like him out in the Commonwealth. The Synths that did exist probably often caused them quite a bit of trouble. But he held onto the hope that they would soon come to understand as the settlers here did, and he treated them as amiably as he could, introducing himself and doing his best to learn their names. Even still, their faces seemed to become harder and harder towards him when each day he had to bring them a little less.

 

The screen door to the house rattled in the wind behind Nick as he trudged into the front room to Jim’s family home. His eyes glowed brightly against the darkness in the house, lit here and there only by candles as the harsh storms had knocked out some of the power to the homes. He wiped the mud from his boots and reached back to pull the door shut behind him before he peeled off his rad-water-soaked jacket and left it at the doormat. The sounds of raging winds and the creaking of trees blew in from outside where the rain pounded down on the roof and leaked into what holes it could find. The leaks dripped water steadily into old pots and pans and buckets in a chorus of noise that had to be tossed out the window in varying intervals.

 

“Tabitha?” He called out, making his way through the familiar rickety home.

 

“Just in here, Nick.”

 

Hearing her voice, Nick passed the kitchen table and into the living room. Jim slept with an arm over his eyes on a threadbare couch, while a number of others rested on makeshift sleeping bags or busied themselves with changing the pots of water from the leaks. Tabitha stood on a small ladder, planks of scrap wood in her hands as she worked on nailing up a leak.

 

“How’s it looking out there, Nick?” She asked through her nail-holding lips.

 

“Doesn’t look like it’s going to let up anytime soon.” Nick responded, “If I didn’t remember seeing a nuke going off, I’d say it was the end of the world out there.” He commented, moving over to hold the ladder steady for her. “We’re runnin’ low on supplies, Tab. I know these guys are going to pay us back once the storms over and they get back home, but we’ve got to be able to last until then. It’s going to get difficult.”

 

“How much Radaway and Rad-X do we have?” She asked, setting the last nail in place and using Nick’s shoulder to steady herself as she descended the ladder.

 

“Not enough to get a group together for a supply run, if that’s what you’re asking.” Nick sighed, “I can head out myself if it comes down to it. I’m immune to rads, got a fusion reactor runnin’ in me after all.”

 

Tabitha breathed out her nose and grabbed the ladder, bringing it into the next room. The mechanical man followed, keeping it steady for the settlement’s leader as she climbed back up again.

 

“You know, I’d rather you not head out on your own.” Tabitha said, expressing concern. “You won’t have to worry about raiders or anything in this weather, but it’s the ferals and mongrels and anything else that I worry about. Just because you’re metal doesn’t mean they’ll be inclined to leave you alone.” She said with a sigh, “How many days do you reckon we have?”

 

“Two, maybe three days worth of supplies if we give everyone the bare minimum.” Nick responded.

 

“Then I’ll come up with something.” Tabitha promised, “Just hang tight. We’ll talk about it later tonight. I’ll meet you over in the garage with the others.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Randal’s garage had changed over the years since Nick’s arrival, once filled with the misbegotten parts of early Synths now looking more like it probably did before the war. Broken pieces of motorbikes and automobiles took up the places of once pristine robotics, the remnants of which had been saved and placed aside for any possible repairs that Nick might need.

 

The Synth himself was busy holding up the frame of the motorbike that the mechanic had been able to cobble together while he shimmied underneath it to make some further tweaks with the repairs. One by one, Tabitha, Jim, and other notable members of the settlements began to filter into the garage- covering themselves with tarps and heavy, worn coats to try to shield themselves from the rain. Then came establishing the problem and possible solutions. Supplies were low, too low, and should the rain continue as anything more than a light drizzle or  snow it would be a dangerous journey for the other settlers to return to their homes. Without any viable way to tell how long the rain was going to continue to last, they had to decide whether they were to head out despite the dangers, wait out the weather, or attempt to gather a scavenging team together to journey through the rain.

 

“The problem is the amount of Rad-X and Radaway we have in our stores-” Tabitha said, rubbing her arms against the chill, “We could risk a group going out, but if it’s too small they won’t be able to carry back everything we need. Too large and we won’t have enough to cure them from their rads, and there’s no guaranteeing that they’ll be able to find more out there.”

 

“Why don’t you just send that thing out?” One of the leaders of the other settlers suggested, motioning towards Nick and Randal at the motorcycle. “If you ask me, it’d solve most of our problems and you can always fix it up if it takes any damage.”

 

“Trust me, I agree that it’d make things easier if we could get this up and running.” Nick replied, glancing over to them, “But this motorcycle isn’t going anywhere without a functioning engine. Petrol engines are pretty much extinct, electric ones aren’t compatible with this model, and finding a working fusion reactor that won’t blow up in your face is harder than you’d expect.”

 

The settler looked at Nick in confusion, looking a mix between offended and like they didn’t quite expect him to respond in such a manner.

 

“I meant -” They reiterated, looking towards Tabitha “-send the Synth out.”

 

There was a short, heavy silence as the members of the home settlement glanced over towards Nick to gauge his reaction. His optics widened and he looked back and forth between the person who’d spoken out and Tabitha with an incredulous expression. The full impact of the other settler’s words hit him. It had been a long time since he’d been referred to as less than human or as an object since he’d settled in and called this place home.

 

“His name is Nick.” Tabitha corrected, a hardness in her voice, “And I’d just as much send you out in this shit than I would him.” She threatened, “Besides, he’s already volunteered to head out, more than you can say for yourself. I’d just rather not have him wandering alone out there. He can’t carry everything himself and even if he did and didn’t have backup he’d be stuck out there anyway.”

 

“Well why not just get a small team together and then use his power source?” They retorted, “We’ve shot enough of them to know they have fusion reactors. Shut him down for a bit, take it out, transfer it over, and then give it back when we’re done.”

 

A number of the other outsiders nodded in approval, finding this to be an agreeable plan. This way Nick wouldn’t be wandering around and out on his own, a small group of two could take the mororbike and fill the sidecar with whatever they could find and get back far quicker than any group on foot possibly could.

 

Tabitha pursed her lips, “Alright. Say if we did do that, which one of you knows how to drive one of these things? Huh?” She asked, giving an accusing glare at each of them, none of them stepping forward. “Yeah. That’s what I thought. I’m going to make one thing clear. Nick here is a part of this settlement, and he’s staying in one piece.”

 

“ Bullshit.” The other settler snapped, “You’d rather let us starve or die of rads than risk this machine? It’s a fucking synth we’ve seen what the hell these things do!”

 

Meanwhile, Nick had become lost in his own thoughts, setting the motorcycle down when Randal crawled out from under it to wipe his hands clean. It was the eventual slam of the garage door that shook him out of his thoughts when the other settler left in anger, a few following him until a slightly smaller group was left. Tabitha let out a huff and crossed her arms.

 

“He is right though.” Nick eventually spoke up, “I’ve got a reactor right here in my chest. I don’t fancy going offline for any amount of time. But if it’s something we need to do, and Randal can put me back together again, I’m willing to risk it.”

 

“Not an option.” Tabitha replied firmly. “We need you here with the settlement, or at least out there lending a hand with whatever group we decide to send out. You’re not just some battery that Randal can swap in and out.”

 

At that moment, Randal let out a loud, hissing gasp that was almost comical in nature. The mechanic quickly covered his mouth, noting now that he was the center of attention before he covered his mouth and quickly cleared his throat.

 

“I have an idea.” Randal offered, a little more controlled now as he bridged his fingers. “So, we all know that Mr. Valentine here is definitely not a battery. But what if we just happened to treat him like one?” He ventured, “I-I mean, like…”

 

He fumbled a bit, realizing his words weren’t quite doing him justice as he quickly dug around in a number of his storage containers for various parts and wires.

 

“Nick keeps his fusion reactor. We just use it as a power source. Wire him up to the engine and he can power it, assuming his systems can take it. But we’re talking nuclear power here.” Randal explained quickly, “Plus, he’s got more knowledge about running vehicles than any of us here right now considering he remembers them… right?”

 

Tabitha seemed to be considering this idea and looked over to Nick, looking hopeful.

 

“Can it work?”

 

“Well…” Nick said, “I do know how to ride one of these things. I remember Old Nick had to use one of the bikes at the precinct a few times during busy days when the cars were all taken.” He explained, scratching at his chest lightly as he looked to Randal. “You think you can wire me up?”

 

“Give me some time to practice with the offline reactors I have and I’m sure I can.” The mechanic affirmed. “This way, we can send out one other guy with Nicky here, he can drive, and everyone’s got backup and plenty of ways to get rid of rads.”

 

“You sure you’re alright with this?” Jim spoke up, looking from his mother to Nick.

 

In all honesty, the Synth wasn’t exactly thrilled to have his power source hooked up like a couple of cars with jumper cables.

 

“I don’t really see many other options.” Nick pointed out, “And I’d rather not end up being the last ‘living’ thing in a ghost town.”

 

“So we’ll send someone else with you.” Tabitha approved with a nod. “Are you up for it, Jim?” She asked, looking to her son. “I’d rather Nick goes with someone who can get along with him. And I need to stay here to keep an eye on things while your Dad treats whoever needs to get rid of their rads.”

 

“I’ll keep him safe, Tab.” Nick promised, “Besides, kid’s gotta learn to drive something at least once in his life.”

 

“Then it’s settled. I’ll get your things ready for you both to head out.” Tabitha said, opening the garage door while the other settlers moved to leave, “Randal, get to work.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The thundering rumble of the motorbike was nearly indistinguishable from the roaring weather that surrounded the duo, whipping up their coats as the lone cracked headlight cut through the darkness in front of them. Nick’s optics, focused through the pelting rain, glowed brightly in the dim as the hind wheel of the motorcycle kicked up a spray in their wake. His hands felt comfortable on the handlebars, a memory that he knew didn’t belong to him, but one that gave him a sense of familiarity all the same. His shirt had been unbuttoned just enough to expose the first large panel on his chest that now was cracked open slightly, just enough for the various connectors that linked him to the bike to power it.

 

“How’re you doing there, kid?” He shouted over the noise, leaning as he took a turn into the city. “Still back there, I hope?!”

 

Jim, meanwhile, was clinging for dear life against the Synth, hiding his face in his back from the water and using him partially as a shield. The freezing rain pelted them like bullets, but Nick had turned off his own sensors in order to ignore the sensations and focus on getting them into the city safely among all of the rubble and ruined roads.

 

“This is terrifying!” Jim replied with a shout, “Jee-sus, these things were normal pre-war? You all were crazy sons of bitches!”

 

Nick merely laughed at that, keeping his view open for any open streets he could turn down. Their target area was beyond what their scavenging groups had been able to get to before. And assuming that no one else had gotten there either, there would be plenty to scavenge in both terms of  food and medicine. They made frequent stops at gas stations when they found them, raiding the storage areas for leftover stock that hadn’t gone bad, supermarkets, and former hospitals or doctor’s offices. Bit by bit, the sidecar became fuller and fuller until they’d needed to use bungee cables to keep it all in place under a tarp, accompanied by the corpses of a couple scrawny mongrels that had tried to attack them during one of their stops.

 

Finally, Nick’s heel came to rest on the pavement as they made their last stop. Jim slid off of the motorbike behind him, gun in hand as he led the way into the ruins of an old Super-Duper Mart that towered over the rest of the buildings. The Synth drew his own weapon, holding the pistol in one hand as he wheeled the motorbike along with him in the other, thankful for the wide doors that would allow him to accompany the other man inside. He found himself growing nervous each time Jim had to go off alone while he was left wired up to the vehicle.

 

This time, he was glad he’d been able to accompany him. Both took shelter behind the motorbike, faced with a number of Feral Ghouls that had been drawn to them and their noise. But things had changed since their first encounter with Ferals, and one by one they were picked off as they shambled and charged their way over. Like most Ferals, they held only small bits of garbage and  trinkets they had collected, like the strange instincts of a magpie that gave worthless items their value.

 

Nick picked a box of Sugar Bombs off the collapsed shelf next to him, turning it over in his hand before adding it to the pile of food and supplies.

 

“You know, it scares me that some of this stuff is even still good.” He said, wrinkling his nose at it, “Makes me wish Old Nick thought twice about eating this stuff. Hell, if the bomb didn’t get him he might still be here from all the damn preservatives.”

 

“When did you start saying ‘Old Nick’ instead of ‘me’ or ‘I’?” Jim asked, shoving a few cans of Cram into the sidecar wherever he could. “I mean, I’ve noticed it before, but back when we first met you never said stuff like that.”

 

Nick merely shrugged, walking the bike past another aisle.

 

“Guess I started saying it when I realized I wasn’t him.” He admitted, “When I really started accepting the fact that I was a Synth. Realized people looked at me different, as different than them. Plus all I am’s just a copy of a Nick Valentine’s brain shoved into a Synth. Not even the first copy neither, another one used this body before his mind got wiped and they put the fresh scan back on.”

 

“You might be right.” Jim agreed with a shrug, “But that ain’t a bad thing. ‘Least we have a Nick here and now, otherwise we’d be shit outta luck.”He said, “Might not be ‘Old Nick’ but far as I see, you got just as much of a right to what’s left than anyone else does.”

 

Jim picked up a few more items and shoved them into his bag, sorting through the rubble on the floor to make sure he hadn’t missed anything.

 

“You know, you don’t have to come with me to the next settlement.” Jim stated, scratching the back of his head, “Not after the bullshit you had to deal with earlier. I just… I thought they’d be more like us, you know? They seemed fine with you at the party, but I guess that’s just because they thought you was some fancy kind of robot that took orders or somethin’.” He explained, “But I don’t want to make you live anywhere that makes you feel like less of a person, y’know? Just because you’re made of different stuff doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to get treated like everyone else.”

 

The Synth had to admit, he was rather disturbed by what had happened earlier. Suddenly his world view seemed very, very sheltered and he had to wonder whether the rest of the world in the majority was like his little settlement or the others.  All those people talking about him like he wasn’t anything more than some mindless machine. He had a hard time now and then figuring out if he wasn’t, to be honest, he’d been programmed to act a certain way like any other robot, just so happened that his programming used to belong to a pre-war cop. Then he’d remember the whole ‘I think, therefore I am’ thing and do his best to push it aside. Problem was that whole conundrum didn’t exactly give him an answer to what he was. ‘I am-’ what?

 

“I appreciate the sentiment, but I’ll be just fine.” Nick assured, smiling slightly, “There isn’t anybody who’s liked by everybody. Even took our town a while to come around. I’m sure the rest of these fellas will too, eventually.” He said, “Besides, I’m sure your mother will be a hell of a lot more comfortable knowing that you’ve got someone else from the home front who has your back.”

 

“We’ll get them to come around eventually.” Jim agreed with a grin, “Especially once we get back with all of this. Let’s go.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Fortune smiled on the settlement for the first time in days after the supplies had been restocked, for during the middle of the night the sounds of rain pounding on tin roofs had faded out, and by the time morning had come a sheet of perfect and pristine snow blanketed the Commonwealth once  more. The white dust sugarcoated the skeletons of trees and bushes, covered the rubble, and glittered in the sunlight- turning the wasteland into a viable wonderland.

 

Deciding to take the chances they had, the settlers from the surrounding areas packed up their things and readied themselves for the few days journey back to whence they came. Some split off, deciding to journey away with other groups as the time came, and some had decided to stay. Goodbyes were more filled with relief than they were tearful and coats and blankets did their best to insulate warmth as the travelers cut paths into the snow with their boots.

 

Tabitha and James embraced their son, similarly outfitted to keep warm and with every possession he owned in the back on his back. He was their only child, and this would be the first time in their lives that he’d be leaving them for somewhere else. It reminded Nick of pre-war memories of the former detective talking with co-workers about how they’d sent their oldest child off to college. He’d never had the chance to know himself how it had felt, but they had likened it to a mourning process, because a certain part of their lives of being a parent had ended.

 

Wiping a few tears from her eyes, Tabitha released her son and took a shuddering breath with a smile. She was worried, Nick could see that much on her face, but she was proud of her boy for making his choice. It was to Nick next, that she offered an embrace, which he accepted with a few comforting pats on her back. This settlement had become his home for the past near-decade, and it was a strange thought to be leaving the people who he’d come to see on a very daily basis.

 

“You both have good travels, keep warm.” She said, pulling away, “And Nick? Keep my boy safe, alright? Keep an eye on him. And look out for yourself too.”

 

The Synth nodded with a sad smile, “Like I always have, Tab. We’ll be back to visit before you know it.”

 

And with that, they joined their place in the wandering line of people filing out of the settlement, blending into the crowd as they journeyed across the great white expanse set out before them. Like a blank sheet of paper ready for a mark or a setting sail coming home.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

A firefight without adrenaline was a very strange thing. All over Nick’s systems pointed him from one danger to the next, calculating near hair trigger reaction times as well as what blows would actually be advantageous to take instead of the alternative. The group of settlers returning to their settlement, a town about a couple day’s journey away, had attracted groups of bandits like buzzards to carrion. Already he knew a number of them had been shot, but how badly he didn’t know. Those without weapons had taken cover behind whatever they could find, and those with had decided to engage the enemy directly.

 

He counted the number of rounds that went off, and when he registered an opening, the Synth ducked out of cover and fired off a number of shots that were greeted with spurts of blood  and cries of pain, coloring the trampled snow red. He quickly ducked back down out of sight. The first time he’d killed a raider had been during his first year living with the settlement, and even without nightmares he could still see the look on the other man’s face when it happened. Now, he was guilty to say, he was used to killing people. It’s not that he enjoyed it, or never felt remorse, it was just something that had to be done when it was either you, them, or someone you cared about and Jim currently had his back.

 

The other man mirrored his actions, knowing well enough by now that Nick’s systems were much less likely to make a mistake as hard wired to numbers as they were. Jim’s face was already scratched from the flying bits of concrete that would explode off the cover of their low lying wall from the hail of bullets driving down on their position. He motioned to him to just stay seated, knowing that now they’d taken down a number of the other raiders, they’d be desperate to take at least one of them out.

 

The Synth waited for another break in the fray, but instead of ducking out of cover, his systems picked up another sound. The click of a lighter, the woosh of flame and how it grew louder as it approached. Nick saw the bottle coming, it took a split second for him to calculate the trajectory of the raider’s molotov. Every warning he had lit up in his mind like the Vegas strip, calculating how best to take minimum damage. But he quickly realized that, like most people, robots also held their own personal interests of survival in mind and not quite the needed amount of concern for the people right next to them.

 

It was a surprising amount of effort he found, to ignore his own warnings. His mechanical brain practically screamed at him the odds of survival and damage as he roughly grabbed the back of Jim’s shirt and, with the surprising strength possessed by Synths, threw him back out of the blast radius where he landed in a puff of cold powder. Nick turned on his heels and he felt the glass smash against his temple. Almost immediately pain flashed across his sensory net and his coolant systems jolted up to high as the flames raced across his skin. In an instant, his sensory net was turned off and everything went numb, just as he expected.

 

He chose not to register Jim’s voice as he whirled around, his blazing optics nearly matching the intensity of the flames that ate at the side of his face and the fringes of his clothes. He vaulted over the low lying wall and sprinted towards the raiders like a bat out of hell, crazed shots of bullets whizzing past. It was obvious that they’d expected him to go down the moment he’d been engulfed in flames, like a human would but it was obvious now that he was very much not human.

 

Nick barreled into the first raider in his path, tackling him in a way his body recognized from his memories of being a cop in old Boston. The training that Old Nick fell out of from his failing body was useful to his mechanical one. He couldn’t get stronger, no, but he knew the exact amount of strength he had and exactly what was in his range of ability.

 

The Synth caught a few raiders aflame with his full-bodied tackles, getting up each and every time to choose a new target after the previous ones were disposed of either from his gun or his hands. The chaos he’d inflicted was working, as the raiders ducked out of cover to avoid him, the other settlers opened fire and encroached on their position. It was only when the last raider had fallen that Nick dropped to the ground, taking up handfuls of cold snow and frozen dust and dirt and smothering out the fires that had covered him. He was relieved to find that his ‘skin’ was relatively fireproof, save for the few edges of his panels that caught a bit of the singe.

 

Nick ignored the footsteps he heard approaching, knowing they belonged to a settler as he felt himself over to make sure he hadn’t sustained too much physical damage. He heard a quiet click as he looked up, and the Synth barely found time to register the barrel of a gun before the deafening bang rung through his ears and everything went black.

 

For the second time in his life, Nick woke up.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The Synth shuddered violently as his sensors came back online, he wasn’t even sure what he was at this point. One by one, each bit of software that operated his hardware booted up and started running save for one, his emergency self-repair system, that shut down. Suddenly, his own existence hit him like a sack of bricks and he tensed, his optics flickering to life and flooding his mind with images of vibrant green.

 

Nick laid there stunned, staring up at a bright green canopy of leaves that waved back and forth in greeting from a slight breeze against the brilliant blue sky. Light filtered down in dappled rays, painting the ground and the man himself with a mural of light. His hands were folded on his chest, and his clothes felt uncomfortable. They were stiff, partially burnt, and nearly crunched when they were folded, some of it simply dissolving and falling away from him.

 

His back clicked uncomfortably as he sat up in silence, trying to make sense of where he was. One side of his face down to his neck felt uncomfortably numb, and he soon figured out why when he reached up to feel it. His neck had a hole blown into it, large enough to put his fist through, and other smaller holes had pocketed his appearance and the side of his face. He felt the inside of one with a finger, feeling the mechanisms inside move as he opened his jaw, and drew his hand away with a shiver.

 

The Synth looked around in confusion, noting the presence of the surviving plant-life. The ground was dry, if not a little damp, and there was no snow to be found at all. He’d been in the middle of winter and now he was surrounded by spring. In the distance he saw blots of green from the trees that were still able to grow their new leaves, others remained dead skeletons of plants. On the subject of skeletons, a number of those were scattered here and there as well, most only partial, and some that had been stripped clean but still held abandoned bits of raider armor on them. He was inside the ruins of a small building that they’d fired on before.  Nick checked his internal chronometer, but it held the same time as it had when he lost consciousness.

 

For however long he’d been slumped up against the wall, he didn’t know, but it hadn’t been good on his hardware. He groaned as he pushed himself to his feet and stretched his back, the feeling reminiscent of his memories of Old Nick after spending some nights sleeping in the seat of his patrol car on a stakeout. He sighed as he got himself back in order as much as he could and turned around to observe the space he’d been sitting in and promptly froze.

 

Against the old concrete, he could plainly see the outline of where he’d been, free of dust and grime and lighter colored against the rest of the wall. It was like he was looking at a ghost of his image still sitting in place, and in all honesty, he couldn’t help but wonder if it was. Above the space, in a handwritten scrawl words had been painted.

 

Nick Valentine

Loving friend and Family

? - Winter 2196

 

The Synth stood for the longest time, staring at his own grave, or memorial rather. Whatever it might be, it had meant that someone he knew thought him dead. He recalled the barrel of the gun and the thunderous shot as he reached up to his face to feel the holes that had been blasted through him. Of course they thought he’d died, he’d been shot in the face and knocked offline. Hell, that would be enough to convince anyone, especially if he hadn’t regained consciousness until now.

 

“Goddamn.” He muttered, looking down at himself and the rumpled clothes, glad they hadn’t buried him. That would have been much harder to deal with, and maybe burying a machine just felt wrong.

 

He checked his holster, noting that they hadn’t left him his gun. Of course not, they needed as many resources as they could carry, and they weren’t about to leave a gun with a dead man when it could end with them winding up in the same place he was. He’d have to make his way back to the settlement and hope he didn’t run into any trouble he couldn’t hide from. Judging by the greenery around him, he had to guess that he’d been out for at least the rest of the winter, maybe through some of the spring. He couldn’t quite figure out what month it might have been.

 

Keeping his hand over the hole in his neck, partly to hide it, partly to get used to it being there, Nick Valentine made his way back to the road where they’d been ambushed and headed back the opposite way he’d gone. He needed to let the others know that he was still alive, and it tore him apart to think that they’d mourned for him in that time not knowing he still functioned. The Synth would need to let the settlement he’d learned to call home know first, have Randal check him over, and then make his way to the settlement where Jim probably was now. With a plan in place, Nick began the slow walk back home.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Night had already fallen on the small settlement as it came into view. Quietly, Nick decided to skirt the edges of the town as he made his way over to his home, deciding that waking up the whole town in the middle of the night would just be detrimental to the whole situation. He’d rather approach his friends in broad daylight where they could see him and not greet them like a ghost at their door after waking them up from their rest. Thinking about it, he also needed time to figure out how he would actually come up to them and explain what happened.

 

Taking things a step at a time, the Synth opened the door to his small place of residence and fumbled over to the table he knew had a lantern. Lighting that, Nick stripped down and tossed away the nature-weathered clothes he’d worn for god knows how long and took a fresh outfit to wear while he waited out the night after he’d given himself a thorough once-over with a clean cloth to wipe off any dirt he could. The bed creaked in protest as he sat down on it and reached for the drawer in his bedside stand.

 

Withdrawing a shard of a cracked mirror, the edges taped over to avoid cuts, the Synth raised it to inspect his appearance and groaned in response to his reflection. He looked like a mess, understandable for someone who’d been caught aflame and shot in the neck. His hair on one side had been burnt away in patches, some left completely bare and he winced inwardly knowing that it would never grow back. He could see his inner workings through the holes in his neck and face, and vaguely wondered if he’d ever be able to find a suitable replacement for his synthetic skin.

 

The mechanical man jumped as the sudden loud stomping of someone climbing up the steps to his front door broke the silence. He stood to open the door himself, going to let whomever it was in before it slammed open before he could get there, yet another gun aimed at him.

 

“-I don’t know who the hell you think you are but-! Oh my god... Nick?”

 

“James?” Nick replied, relieved to see the other man, “I may have had my second coming, but I wouldn’t quite give me a title like that yet.” He chuckled, embracing his friend as the other man dropped his gun to the floor and immediately pulled him into a rough embrace.

 

“I thought you were dead .” The man said, muffled by the Synth’s shoulder. His voice sounded broken and at the edge of tears. “How are you even here?”

 

“Woke up a day or so ago.” Nick explained, his metal hand whirring slightly as he patted his back. “Last thing I remember is getting shot. It must have knocked out nearly all of my systems, waking up again was some sort of ride, let me tell you. Woke up to some message in my head about an emergency self-repair system so it’s good to know I have that.”

 

“God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that I left you there. I didn’t know .” His friend sobbed in response. “I didn’t know. You wouldn’t wake up, eyes went dark and everything. I could hear things still running in you, but I thought the part that was you wasn’t there anymore.” He rambled, “I even got Randal out to look at you but he didn’t even have the tools to work on something like your damn brain. I would’ve shot the guy that did it if they didn’t stop me. You weren’t even doing anything, they just walked right up point-blank.”

 

Nick’s brows furrowed in confusion, trying to make sense of what had just been said. James hadn’t accompanied he and Jim with the rest of the other settlers. He wouldn’t have been able to tell him these things because he wouldn’t have been there to witness them. With a sinking feeling of dread, he placed his hands on the other man’s shoulders and pushed him back to get a look at him. Nick’s expression dropped, his optics bringing the other man’s face into focus. On first glance, he’d recognized him as James, simply due to his age but now…

 

“...Jim?” He asked, feeling like the world had slipped out underneath his feet.

 

Jim’s face also dropped, seeing the expression on his friend. He muffled a sob and sniffed heavily through his nose before bringing a sleeve to his face to wipe away the wetness there. He looked away for a moment, trying to gather his words. The shame, the guilt, the happiness despite these things were all visible in the minute nuances of his face, no longer the young man that Nick had known what seemed like a day beforehand. Jim swallowed and squeezed Nick’s shoulder as the Synth looked into the face of a man nearly as old as he felt he was.

 

“Ah…” Jim began, trailing off before he had to wipe his face again, “You’ve… you’ve been gone a long time, Nick.” He admitted, “But I’m glad to have you back.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Nick drummed the fingers of both his hands on the wooden table in Jim’s kitchen, each hand making vastly different noises than the other. It was his parent’s house, both whom were sleeping on the upper floor, as well as Jim’s wife and older son. The man himself sat on the other side of the table bouncing a small girl on his knee, a toddler who’d been woken and remained awake for her father to return.

 

“So… where do I begin.” Jim sighed, “Well, I guess it’s obvious that I didn’t make it to the other settlement after what happened with you.” He explained, looking weary, “After they saw what you’d done to the raiders, it scared a bunch of them. They weren’t up for taking chances.”He said bitterly, “And it’s not like I could hold them responsible for anything. They just saw you as a machine that’d snapped. I didn’t want anything to do with them after that.”

 

“I managed to get Randal all the way out here after it happened, but there was nothing he could do. We had no idea how to get you working again, just thought you’d gone brain dead. Hard to think anything else considering you’d pretty much gotten a shotgun to the face.” He admitted, “The ground was too cold to even think about digging you an actual grave, kept tellin’ myself I’d go back in the spring and do it proper, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. You was still runnin’ so eventually I just…”

 

“Slapped my name on the wall behind me and just propped me up there.” Nick filled in, “Not judging you, probably ended up being the best for me in the long run anyway.” He commented with a shrug, “Gotta say, I am thankful for what you wrote though. Never thought a Synth like me would get any kinda honors.”

 

For somewhere that used to feel so much like a home, Nick felt incredibly out of his element. It was almost worse than it had been when he’d first woken in the Commonwealth. Then he eventually learned that this was the only life he as a Synth truly had, despite having someone else’s memories as a basis. Now, after he’d spent so long finding a place and doing what he did to belong, he’d been ripped away from it and now enough had changed that he didn’t quite feel like he fit anymore.

 

Jim smiled a little sadly at that. “Well what’d you expect? I practically grew up followin’ around a Synth. Can’t say you aren’t family now.” He said, “Guess that’s one of the reasons I couldn’t bring myself to do it, y’know? Part of me just left you there hopin’ someone better than me or Randal would find you and know what to do better than I did.”

 

An uncomfortable silence passed between the two as they both just sat and absorbed what the other had to say. Jim’s little girl watched the Synth with wide eyes, sucking on one hand. She reached out to him and made a grabbing motion and Nick reached forward with his metal hand, allowing her to wrap her tiny fingers around his.

 

“You look pretty damn worse for wear though.” Jim commented with a quiet laugh, “Scared the shit outta me when I saw you.”

 

“Pft, look who’s talking.” Nick retorted with a slight smile, reaching up to the holes in his skin with his free hand, “But… yeah, it is kind of gruesome, but it’s better than what the alternative would’ve been if I hadn’t taken that molotov and ran out there.”

 

“I’m glad you think so.” He replied. “You thinkin’ about staying still?” He asked, “I mean, it’s been a while, but your house has always been yours. Mostly because it’s missing most of the stuff that people need. But I’m sure everyone’ll be happy to hear you’re back. ‘Sides, I’d like the kids to meet their Uncle Nick.”

 

Nick regarded the small child who’d managed to get his finger in an iron grip. Jim’d definitely gone and accomplished at least a part of what he’d set out to do. Though there was a definite weariness in his eyes that came with his added years that he hadn’t seen in him as a boy or a young man. He wondered where exactly it had come from and if it had started with him going comatose. Nick felt guilty he hadn’t been there to help and now it was far past the time he could. In an instant, the closeness that they’d held while the Synth had helped raise the boy was gone because years he couldn’t experience had flown by without him knowing. It was like he was a figure in a storybook who’d been written in a few chapters too late.

 

“Yeah.” Nick answered with a bit of a forced smile, “I’ll stay.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

_ “-and so I did.” Nick recalls, “But only for about the next year or so. Eventually I just left.” He explains, resting his hands in his pockets. “It just didn’t feel right anymore. So I went off to start back at square one. Promised I’d come back and visit, but by the time I did, there was nothing left to visit.” The Detective says a bit gruffly, “It’d been turned into some raider camp. Came back with a few buddies I’d made and cleared it out. Didn’t find any sign of anyone left though, the houses didn’t even have any of their previous effects so I had to hope and assume that they’d just left to join up with another, safer settlement.” _

 

_ “After that, it was just a long while of wandering around. Tried to track them down but it’s pretty damn hard without any leads to go on and zero contacts.” The Detective admits, “Eventually you go long enough and you realize your time’s run out. Eventually I realized searching for them didn’t have any point any more, with the years that passed I just had to accept that they’d died without me knowing.” He sighs, “That was a long couple of years when I accepted that fact. Then I got a lead a number of  decades too late, heard stories about Randal, some young lady with a talent for mechanics going on about her grandfather or great grandfather who’d had a mechanical arm. That young lady then went on to marry a young man and took the last name Amari. I think you know where it goes from there.” _

 

_ “So… Doctor Amari was related to him?” You ask, looking over at the Synth and catching sight of a small smile on his face. _

 

_ “Was? I think you mean is. Distantly, yes, or at least I’m pretty sure- but it’s pretty much the only connection that I was able to follow on through with. Kept in contact one way or another ever since.” Nick reveals, “Even saw them found the Memory Den, even before Goodneighbor was a thing. Hell, before Hancock’s parents even got together to spawn that dumbass. You stick around long enough and it’s hard not to know where everyone came from.” _

 

_ “So, you started living in Diamond City after that then?” You ask, thinking you’ve finally caught up to what he’d told you before. _

 

_ “Well, not entirely. I didn’t get there until after the Broken Mask incident. I had plenty of time to get to know the first Doctor Amari.” He says “But mmm… let’s save that story for another time.” Nick said, flicking away a burnt out cigarette. “ ‘Sides, we’re almost home.” _

  



	8. Coming Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to learn that you can't always live in the past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Sorry it's taken so long to get this chapter out. College has been kicking my ass, but I figured I'd get this out by Valentine's day, so here you are!

 

_ You haven’t been home in weeks. ‘Home’ being the extra bed at the Detective Agency, the one that Ellie doesn’t use. It was originally ‘Nick’s Bed’ but existed solely for the fact that it works as a boundary area between the ‘work’ and ‘home’ areas of the small building that makes up the Agency. Of course, Nick doesn’t sleep and upon discovering that you no longer had a home to go to, he graciously offered up his own. When you weren’t out wandering the wastes with him solving cases or looking for the next lead on your missing child, you often fell asleep listening to him muddle about the office. It was the opposite of bothersome while you were trying to fall asleep because it distracted you from darker thoughts. _

 

_ However, considering everything that you had gone through within the span of the last few months (had it been months?) you could only run from your problems for so long. You had told Nick that you had some errands you needed to run, it was nothing important mostly collecting medical supplies, and promised that you’d return soon. As if to prove this, you left Dogmeat at the Agency with him. Your ‘errands’ however consist more of a guilty pleasure of a thought, and you lost yourself in it.  _

 

_ It had been after you had found Kellog, and the first solid lead to your child, that you even considered using the Memory Den for your own personal needs. Originally, you walked in looking for closure between you and your spouse. Their death had happened so quickly, and so violently that it left you numb in a way that made adapting to the severity of the Commonwealth surprisingly easy. But something about the bittersweet way that the Detective talked about his past and his coming into a very different world woke something within you. Would there ever be a day where you could look back upon such damaging events and see them as a stepping stone for what you have become? _

 

_ You had very nearly offered to tell your own story, but when Nick had prompted you, the emotion swelling in the back of your mind had frightened you. Your throat tensed and the contrast between the quiet hollowness that you experienced when thinking about your situation had been jarring. You didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that they were dead, nor that your son was kidnapped, nor that the world you once lived in is gone because somehow your acknowledgement would mean that it was true. And you really didn’t want it to be despite the fact that it was. You feel guilty because of this though, because wishing for your old life to return means to give up the new relationships you’ve forged. And it pains you when you realize that you can’t truly favor one over the other, even if that would do any sort of good. The old world you knew is gone, and there is only the choice but to move forward. _

 

_ So, when you walked into the Memory Den, you went in with the mindset of saying goodbye. You would surround yourself with memories of your loved ones, appreciate them for what they were, and accept that they were gone. It would be the start of your mourning process, the first time you would try to move past it all. Knowing that Nick, in a way, was only reaching the end of his mourning of Jenny after the death of Eddie Winter you knew that it would likely take a long time. But it would be the first step and the sooner you begin this journey, the sooner it will be over.  _

 

_ Your plan backfired in the worst way.  _

 

_ The moment you woke up in your own memories, you couldn’t say goodbye. It was as Doctor Amari said, you lived them like the moment they happened- Birthday parties, holidays with your family, meeting your spouse, your wedding, bringing your child home for the first time, and by the time you existed in the moment of them you didn’t want to say goodbye. So, day after day, you return to the Memory Den to relive a selection of memories you cherish like a movie, and each day you feel a pit of growing guilt for continuing to do so, but that pit disappears the moment you plug in. _

 

 

* * *

 

 

The memory you are in right now is one of your favorites. It’s Shaun’s first trip to the park with you and your spouse as a family. You packed a lunch for your spouse and yourself and spread out a checkered blanket to sit on and you think to yourself that it’s just like the families that you see on TV. The weather hasn’t quite turned cold just yet, although fall is just around the corner- the leaves on the trees are still bright green but you can see some with a tinge of yellow at the edges. 

 

The both of you set up the plates and divvy out your lunch, Shaun sits in his carrier, staring up and making soft noises at the plush and shiny toys hanging down from the bar across the top. It’s a simple lunch, sandwiches, bags of chips, a sliced apple, a Nuka-Cola, and it calls back to a more comfortable time. The taste is familiar, wholesome, and comforting.. It was almost as if the apocalypse was in the past or had never even happened.

 

“This is great, honey, thanks for putting this together.” Your spouse speaks up over the pop of the cola cap, “We should do this more often.”

 

You smile and your eyes dart to the bottle cap. Part of you instinctively wants to snatch it up and place it in your pocket, but you don’t because that’s not how this memory goes. 

 

“Thanks, but you’re putting the meal together next time.” You tease, wiping the salt on your fingers from the chips on a stray napkin. 

 

Somewhere you hear a car door slam, possibly out in the street where another park-goer has come to visit. Despite reliving your memories, you realize how many things you forget when not in the moment- the sounds, the smells, the small details and everything else that is lost from the context. You hear the soft crunching sound of shoes against grass slowly approaching and neither of you react, because that’s not how the memory goes. You’re only pulled out of it when a shadow encroaches over your meal and a voice that you recognize speaks out, but it doesn’t belong here.

 

“S’cuse me.”

 

You look up and to the side, squinting a little against the sunlight until the figure shifts to block it out and everything comes into focus. He is wearing brown slacks, freshly pressed, and a white button-down shirt crinkled by the suspenders strapped down over his shoulders. His jacket and hat both possess a similar shade of brown as his pants. He looks very human, with a head of black hair save for the gray at his temples. He has the potential to be attractive, you note, but it’s the potential that everyone has. He nods to you and your spouse in greeting as he reaches into his jacket and withdraws something that looks similar to a wallet and flips it open to reveal a shiny badge with a logo you can’t make out from this distance before he puts it back into his jacket. 

 

“I’m Officer Valentine, from the BADTFL. If it’s alright with you, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

 

You automatically look to your spouse who continues eating, like they haven’t noticed the presence of another person. You expect them to look up and to talk to the officer, but they don’t. You feel your mouth go a little dry, because you know this isn’t how the memory goes. 

 

“Sure.” You answer, feeling a strange dreamlike fuzziness come over you as you stand. 

 

Officer Valentine leads you down the soft, grassy hill and you note that he doesn’t seem particularly interested in his surroundings, the same way someone on a diet might ignore a freshly baked cake. In the distance you hear your spouse pose you a question as if you were still sitting in front of them. You don’t answer, but they laugh at your unspoken reply anyway. Officer Valentine opens the door to his car and sits with a sigh into the driver’s seat and you silently make your way to the other side of the car and enter the passenger side. 

 

You look at him expectantly, waiting for the questions he wants to ask, but instead he takes out a cigarette, lights it, and takes a long drag as he rolls down the window and then blows out the smoke. He reaches forward, starts the car, and you both drive off. A thought crosses your mind that you haven’t agreed to go anywhere with the officer, but for some reason it doesn’t bother you. You note that you’d never driven this way before, and you don’t remember the areas that you are now passing through, and you have to assume that this was a result of Officer Valentine’s presence but you can’t quite grasp why. Officer Valentine glances over your way and taps his cigarette against the rolled down window, the ashes fly off into the distance behind the car. 

 

“...I’m sorry.” Are the first words that come out of his mouth, accompanied by a sigh, “I should’ve seen it coming. I  _ did  _ see it coming. I just… I thought…” The Detective says, trying to organize his thoughts into words, and the sound of regret is palpable in his voice. “You spent all that time chasing my ass around the Commonwealth helping me hunt down my demons and like a damn fool I just stood and watched as yours swallowed you up.”

 

“I don’t think I’m following you.” You say, that same heavy fuzz ever present in your mind. 

 

“Do you know where you are?” Is the Detective’s next question he poses.

 

“In… your car?” You say confusedly, glancing out the window, “I mean, I don’t recognize the area that you’re taking me.”

 

“You don’t recognize the area because you’re in my memories now, not yours.” He clarifies gently, “Just the memories of Old Boston rattling around in my head case. ‘S why I look like this.” He explains, tapping the fingers of one of his hands against the wheel. “Nick the Synth wasn’t around yet.”

 

The drumming of the Detective’s fingers against the steering wheel cause a strange image to flash through your mind. For a moment, you think that the Detective should have a bare metal hand instead of flesh and blood and initially it sounds absurd. When you look at his face, there are features you suddenly begin to recognize despite how foreign they seem now lacking the gray tone and creases. All at once, it feels like you’ve woken up from a dream or remembered something you thought you’d forgotten.

 

“Nick? Is that you?”

 

“Eh, it’s as me as ‘me’ gets in these older memories.” He answers, the corners of his lips twitch slightly, “Not exactly the gears and gaskets I’m used to, but it’ll do. Good to see you finally ‘woke up’. The memories, they kinda… get you living in the moment again. Takes a little while to snap yourself out of it. I had to try to take it slow and blend in at least a little to get you to realize it yourself, otherwise it might’ve jarred you more than I’d care to.”

 

An uncomfortable silence falls around you both as you think about what to say. You feel ashamed, caught red handed like a child stealing from their mother’s purse. The worst part is that you knew it would end with the Detective coming to find you, not like this maybe, but you knew you’d need to face him. A piece of you feels like a growing pit and you can’t help but to think in some way you were seeking attention through your behavior. 

 

“I was worried about you.” Nick offers, breaking the silence first. “I’ve  _ been _ worried for you. You know, kid? I just… I never knew how to go about it with you. What you needed to get through this.” He explains quietly, “I just figured you were like me, maybe. Had to deal with it on your own and in your own way, just make peace with your thoughts. Hoped you wouldn’t go making the same mistakes I did.”

 

He looks at you, waiting for a response, but it doesn’t come. You can’t bring yourself to look past the fists you’ve balled into the fabric of your pants. It’s partially from guilt, knowing you’ve made a mistake, and partly because you’re trying to ignore the uncomfortable knot in your throat. You feel the momentum of the car slow to a halt and when you look out the window and you notice that the both of you are parked outside of a movie theater. There’s a sudden, gentle pressure at your shoulder and you look up to find the reassuring grip of your companion’s hand. Bringing yourself to look at his face, you realize something you hadn’t quite been able to grasp before. Maybe it had been the layers of wear and tear and old artificial skin that had stopped you from noticing, but you hadn’t truly understood just how  _ tired _ the Detective looked.

 

It wasn’t a physical tiredness that you could see, and you knew the Detective’s mind was as sharp as ever, but you recognized the look as a weariness. An old, old world-weary look that was something you sensed more than you saw. You figure it’s just what happens when you’ve been around for so long.

 

“Can I show you something?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

The movie theater has a small crowd already inside with groups of friends talking to one another, some lined up to buy drinks or popcorn, and others bustling about to claim their seats in the theater. Nick leads the way and you follow close behind, finding it hard to grasp that the two of you aren’t actually in a theater in some forgotten part of the Commonwealth that was never hit by the bombs. You can’t help but to wonder why he has this memory, or whom Old Nick had come here with. The thought of a lone Jenny somewhere in the crowd- so close, yet so far- makes you feel a twinge of sympathy for the Detective. 

 

“Why are we here?” You venture to ask, sticking close to your friend.

 

“Flipping through memories ain’t an easy process if you don’t know what you’re doing. Waking up is just as confusing.” Nick replies, glancing back at you as he leads you into a dimmed theater. “And especially if you’re not used to it. It’s similar to how you get into the memories. So long as you’ve got something that helps you lose track of your surroundings or transitions you through, it’s easy going.”

 

“You almost sound like an expert at this.” You say with a bit of surprise, sidling into an empty row in the theater.

 

“Yeah, well…” Nick grumbles quietly, letting out a breath as he sinks into the theater seat. “Kind of wish I wasn’t.”

 

As you sit down next to him, he motions to the screen and as if on cue the lights dim and the clicking of the tape reel fills the air as the grainy footage starts to run and an image plays on the screen. It has a slightly static-y fuzz, and looks like one of the ‘standby’ images that a local news station might have put on television when off the air. But, while you sit and watch, the light static feels like it’s engulfed the field of your vision and you let yourself drift off.

 

 

* * *

 

 

When you wake up in the Memory Lounger, you note that a number of hours have passed since you plugged in. The monitor in front of you, the one that acts as a focal point while the machine does its work, holds the same image that the screen in the movie theater from Nick’s memory. You exit the lounger steeling yourself to meet your friend in the flesh again, ignoring how ironic the thought was, but find that he isn’t present in the room. Last time he’d also woken up first when you had accessed Kellog’s memories, and you had to guess that maybe it was much easier for him as a Synth to ‘unplug’. 

 

You have to assume that he’s in the back room, in the lab, since the main floor is relatively empty save for a desperate few grasping at past happiness. The few who you now have to count yourself a part of. As you enter the lab, you find Nick standing with his back towards you at a terminal with Doctor Amari at his side. From behind you note how tall and ragged he looks, not just him, but his clothes as well and it brings to mind the image of a scarecrow. 

 

They converse quietly with each other but when Amari turns her head, noting your presence, she looks up to the Detective and quietly excuses herself. You walk past her to take her place, wondering exactly what it was that Nick needed to show you that it couldn’t be shared. He looks to you, and you nod in return.

 

“Hey, Nick.” You say, leaning against the counter.

 

“Hey kid.” He replies quietly, “Doing alright?”

 

You shrug in response. The question is more courtesy than anything, he knows how you’re doing, and it isn’t the best. He makes a soft coughing sound and removes his hat, a rare sight, and holds it politely in both hands as he moves aside to let you get a view of the terminal. The screen is covered in some sort of coding process, you can determine that much with your minor hacking talents.

 

“Any idea what this is?” He poses, and you can tell he knows the answer already.

 

“Some sort of program?” 

 

“Specifically, a program made especially for Synths. Ones like myself and Gen 3s.” Nick clarifies. “This program, when used in a Memory Lounger, initiates a protocol in Synths that results in a massive systems wipe. Takes away memories, personality traits, anything programmed into you that you might not want, and leaves standard databases and operating protocols intact.” He explains, “As you know, Amari gets Synths coming in here through the Railroad. The ones coming in here come in for one reason only. That program.” He says, tapping the monitor before adding softly, “And I’m the reason it exists.”

 

It takes you a moment to process the information, but then the implication hits you and your eyes widen.

 

“So… so you helped Amari or one of her relatives to make this program?” You ask, “To help synths start lives of their own?” You ask, hoping that he wouldn’t correct you.

 

“Synths, humans now too, though there’s a variation on the program for that.” Nick answers, “I told you before, how I get flashes of Old Nick’s memories, right?” He deviates, “Normally, memories don’t work like that. You just have ‘em, not unless you forgot them, that is. I’ve had holes in my memory of Old Nick’s life since I could remember, but never as bad as they are now.”

 

“Nick?” You ask, swallowing in anticipation before you pose your question, “Did you… did you try to erase yourself?”

 

The Synth let out a sigh as he reached out and turned off the monitor.

 

“I lost everything.” He says, dropping his shoulders, “Or at least, it felt like it. Friends, family, everyone I thought I knew before the war- the person I thought I was. It’s not like I could have helped that.” He listed, “And then The first place in the Commonwealth that I’d called home. The first people that Nick the Synth ever cared about. And that was my own damn fault for leaving.”

 

“When the Memory Den was founded, I used it for the exact same reason you’re here for now. Or at least, something similar.” He admits, looking your way, “And I was never comfortable with having the memories and thoughts of a dead man. Synths were despised, and that was still something that I was getting used to. I had it easy before the Institute became as much as a problem as they are now. I didn’t have anything going for me.”

 

“So I came here, and like most Synths do nowadays that think they’re people they aren’t, I aimed to get it all erased.” Nick sighs, putting his hat back on, “I went in willing to give up everything to start back at square one and make something of myself. Turn into whoever I’d be without whatever’s left of Old Nick breathing down my neck.” He says, shaking his head, “Didn’t go through with it, not all the way at least. Turns out, partway through I got to thinking about the kind of person I’d be coming out as a blank slate. You look at the Commonwealth and at the people around you and you realize that good, truly good people are at an all-time low. And I realized that odds were I’d turn into someone who I wouldn’t want to be. No better than some raider or scammer. Might as well head back to the Institute and let them load me up as some old pre-war Ex-convict.”

 

“I decided that I could live with this, live with being Nick Valentine. So long as I could still do a bit of good and lend a hand where it was needed.” He says, “ ‘Course it was a fine time to realize that when my databanks were getting dumped. I pulled out of that thing as fast as I could, though some of the damage was already done. Since then the old systems have been re-coding and recovering partial memory files. Even the ones from back in the Institute they thought they wiped- years of experiments. Sometimes it takes something to jog them back into place.” He recounts, “I think I’ve got some of them back now, at least the important ones. Hell, not like I’d know really if I was missing anything.”

 

“I’m so sorry.” You say, reaching out and resting a hand against his upper arm.

 

Nick merely offers you a small smile and pats your back in return before resting both hands on your shoulders.

 

“Don’t be.” He says, “I’m over it. The point I’m trying to make, kid, is that I don’t want you making the same mistakes that I did. Because while this place might have the answers for some people, I don’t think they’re the kind of answers you’re looking for.” He says, “We’ve been stuck in a pretty similar boat so far, and I’m hoping the waters are kinder to you than they’ve been to me, and you can keep going.”

 

“How…”

 

You try to open your mouth to say something, but a lump rises in your throat that makes you bite your lip and turn your head. Taking a breath, you shudder and sniff louder than you intend, choking a sob. Nick’s optics brighten and the Synth moves closer as a comforting presence. You look up to the Detective, feeling your eyes watering.

 

“How do you keep going?”

 

Your voice cracks and you can’t stop yourself from crying before you hear the answer, the dam giving way as soon as you posed the question. It was only so long until it all would catch up to you like it did now.  Sinking into the Detective, you bury your face into his shoulder and you feel his arms wrap around you. It’s the first true embrace that you’ve experienced since you woke up with your spouse the morning the bomb dropped. 

 

“Because it gets better, kid. It gets better.” Nick assures softly, “And you want to be around for when it does.”

 

“But how is it worth it?” You insist, squeezing your eyes shut, “How does it make up for all of this shit?”

 

The Synth rests his chin on the top of your head as he shushes you softly, letting your ragged breaths calm before he answers. 

 

“You _ make _ it worth it.” He says, letting you cry yourself out. “Because you’ve got to write yourself a better story than the one you were saddled with. You sift through the bad and you find the good and you don’t let a thing ruin it.” He says, “When this old Synth got out of that lounger years ago, he was heading to a good place because there wasn’t anywhere to go but up. And I told you these stories already.” 

 

“You pretended you were a bomb.” You say, letting out a short laugh despite the tears on your face.

 

“Damn right I did. Saved the mayor’s daughter.” He chuckles. “I earned my place in Diamond city. Helped people best I could. Went from handyman to Detective. Took in a young girl who’d lost her parents when she didn’t have nowhere else to go. She hated me at first, but now Ellie and I are like family.” He recounts simply, “And a number of months ago I broke up a bar fight- messed up one side of my face worse than it already was if you can imagine that. And a few weeks later came the best part.”

 

“I was stuck down in this damn Vault trying to figure out a way to get myself out of there, when lo and behold, this Vault Suit-wearing nutjob comes and busts me out. They tell me they’ve been an icicle for the past couple centuries, and we go dragging each other across the Commonwealth.” He says, and you can practically hear his smile, “And they turn out to be the best damn partner I’ve ever had.”

 

“That is the best part.” Comes your muffled response, and you feel the Synth’s shoulders shake with silent chuckles and a reassuring hand at your back.

 

“‘Course, we’ve got to figure out where to go from there.” Nick points out, “And I think you know.”


	9. Diamonds and Rubies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A long awaited trip back to Sanctuary and some old ghosts are put to rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, it's been ages since I've been able to update this thing! I fell off back when Far Harbor was released because it screwed with my timeline and it took ages to get the motivation up to edit the rest of the fic and get the final couple chapters finished. But I'm very happy with how things have turned out now that I've found the inspiration to finish it. There's going to be one more chapter after this one, maybe two, that is/are already written. I just need time to reread and review it before I release it here.

You stand at the splintered remains of the bridge that leads into Sanctuary. Two hundred years ago, it had been sturdy enough to carry across a truck but time has given it tests. Whether it had been the initial blast or simply age, it left only the most reliable boards standing. They creak with the same  welcoming sound as the worn boards in an old house and the smell of the sun warmed wood fills you with a sense of nostalgia. 

 

“Well, isn’t this a blast from the past.” Nick comments quietly, holding onto the railing as he mirrors your steps. “I can’t believe that so much of this is still standing.”

 

“That’s mostly because of Codsworth. He’s the  Mr. Handy that helped me take care of the family and my house.” You explain, listening to the bubbling of the small stream behind you as you leave the bridge behind. “He’s done his best to take care of the place. Now he’s helping out Preston and the rest of the settlers make a home for themselves here.”

 

“Hope they aren’t the kind of settlers that shoot first and ask questions later.” The Detective admits, eyeing the area a bit more warily as Dogmeat padded past him and on ahead. 

 

“Once they see you’re with me, I’m sure they’ll warm up to you.” You reassure, catching sight of a glint of silver in the distance.

 

You feel a heaviness in your chest as you walk down the once familiar road towards the house that you once considered yours. A long time ago it had been a place of comfort and reassurance but now you could hardly bring yourself to step foot in the front yard. Thankfully you didn’t have to because Codsworth was quick to notice your approach and  met you both halfway.

 

“Oh my stars, I’m so happy that you’ve returned home!” Codsworth greets, his voice full of relief as the apertures in his optics focused in on your face. “I’ve been so  _ worried  _ for you out there, risking life and limb. Tell me, have you found young Master Shaun? And who might this be?”

 

“We haven’t found Shaun yet, but we will.” Nick assures Codsworth before you can answer, thankful that he stepped in before you had to say the words yourself. “The name’s Nick Valentine. I’m a Detective, and your friend’s case here is the one I’m working on.”

 

“Well, goodness me! Quite nice to meet you, Mr. Valentine. I’d shake your hand, but as I lack them, I’ll politely refrain.” The robot chuckles, “I dare say, I was worried for a moment that I’d been replaced with a newer model. I’m quite glad to be proven wrong. But, if I may ask, why you’re here? Looking for clues perhaps?”

 

“Not exactly, we’ve got a pretty solid lead, but it’ll take a bit of preparation before we’re both prepared to pursue it.” Nick responds, “Both ah… physical and mental prep. We’re here to tie up some loose ends. You both have someone very important to you who’s been left down in that Vault.” He says gently. “And they deserve their final repose.”

 

“Ah… I see.” Codsworth replies, by the sound of his voice, he’s struggling too. “Any idea how long you’ll both be staying?”

 

“We’ve set aside a few days to get everything straight.” Nick assures, “Then we’re getting the supplies that our favorite icicle here needs before we head south to the Glowing Sea to track our lead.”

 

“Well, thanks to Mr. Garvey’s help, we’ve managed to patch up the old estate.” Codsworth replies proudly, hovering a bit closer to the house, “I’ve been keeping it in amiable shape for your return.” He says, looking to you, “Please, please, step inside. Let me get you a snack!” 

 

However, you feel frozen in place as you take in the image of the house before you. It does look better than the first time you saw it. The walls and windows have been patched up and it’s the only yard in Sanctuary, maybe the entire Commonwealth, that has been meticulously trimmed as it is. But inside, you know that no matter the amount of patch ups and repairs, it would feel empty. 

 

The crunching of grass underfoot nearly makes you flinch as Nick moves to follow Codsworth. Your hand darts out to his coat, catching his sleeve firmly and he turns his head to look at you with mechanical precision. He regards you with a questioning look on his face and you shake your head. You aren’t ready to go in, not yet. 

 

“Actually, Codsworth-” He calls out, casually placing his hands in his pockets as he tears his optics away from you, “-We’ve got to check out something first. Do you know if the Land’s house is still standing?”

 

“Mr. and Mrs. Lands? Goodness, that’s a name I haven’t heard for some time.” Codsworth replies wistfully, “The family often lent me to them to care for their hedges for them, such a pleasant couple. But yes, their home is where it has always stood. I must ask, are you familiar with them? Something about you does jostle the old processor.”

 

“You can say that.” Nick replies, tipping his hat as he turns to lead you down the road. “We’ll be back later if you don’t mind holding down the fort until then.”

 

* * *

 

As the front door opens with an aged creak, a slat of warm afternoon light cutting through the dim, there’s something peaceful with the way that the motes of dust float around in the air. Nick moves to the side as Dogmeat pads into the unlit house, disappearing into the shadows where the only thing that identifies him is the sound of his curious sniffing and the occasional sneeze. The floorboards creak as the Detective leads the way in front of you and it’s followed by a light clatter as his foot collides with an overturned coat stand. He bends down to pick it up with a slight groan, setting it upright next to the door where he promptly removes his coat and hat and hangs them up. Nick journeys into the gloom, passing the entry to a ruined kitchen and into the remains of the den. 

 

“Well, this place has really gone to hell, hasn’t it?” He says, thumbs in his pockets as he lets his shoulders drop and relax. “Mr. Lands would throw a fit if he saw the kind of state the place was in nowadays. And that we let a dog in.”

 

As if on cue, Dogmeat appears out of a room down the hallway with his ears perked and promptly trots into the living room and jumps up on the remains of the couch with a jingle of his collar, turning around a few times before lying down on a cushion that doesn’t have the springs uncovered. Nick chuckles and reaches down to scratch his ears. 

 

Despite how at-ease Nick appears, you can’t help but to feel like you’re trespassing on hallowed ground. This was someplace that belonged to Nick in a way and something that was bigger than you both. It is someplace that you both know of, like how one might know of the Pyramids or the Grand Canyon, but something that only existed in memories and from word of mouth and that seems larger than it was. The house is a tangible memory of lives that used to exist. 

 

“Any reasons in particular you wanted to visit this place?” You ask, crossing your arms over yourself as you step over a piece of glass that looks like it came from a vase or picture frame. 

 

Nick lifts his head up and stares at the ceiling for a moment, noting the patchwork of holes that had eaten into the roof. The way the light hits the floor reminds you of light filtering down through a canopy of leaves and you note that where the dappled light lands on the floor there grows patches of grass where dirt and nature have infiltrated to take the house back as its own. 

 

“I’m not sure if you can really call it a ‘visit’.” Nick corrects, patting his pocket before realizing he’d forgotten his cigarettes in his coat. “This is the first time I’ve been here. As a Synth at least. I never had a reason that seemed good enough at the time to make the trip.” He explains, moving back to the coat rack, “And seeing as you didn’t seem ready to go home yet, I figured it was about time I did.”

 

Now with a cigarette in hand, he makes his way into the dining room and lights the smoke with a snap of his metal fingers as the sparks from the contact jump away. You bend down and pick up the picture frame that the glass had fallen out of as your companion taps the dust covered table.

 

“It always amazes me what sort of things last the longest.” He says, “The living room is pretty much destroyed but a bit of cleaning in here and you wouldn’t notice a difference. I remember always sitting right there in that chair whenever they all got together for dinner.” He recounts, gesturing at the table. “That was always Jenny’s seat over there. Even after she died, no one really felt right using it. Her old man sat there, her mom next to him,  and then you’ve got yours truly. That chair was always about a quarter inch off on one of the legs.”

 

Putting the cigarette in his mouth he reaches out to the back of the chair to test it and sure enough it wobbles back and forth as he expected it to and he smiles in response.

 

“Guess in a way, everything stays the same, doesn’t it?” Nick muses, looking up at a bird’s nest nestled on top of the light fixture hanging above. “Well, not all of it, but in a way.”

 

You listen to the Detective as you pry apart the already broken picture frame in your hands carefully to free the paper still trapped inside. You nod in agreement with him as you let the pieces of frame drop with a light clatter against the floor and move into the light to observe the photograph. Nick isn’t pictured there, but you can guess who is.

 

“Is this them?” You venture, walking to the Synth’s side and holding out the worn photograph.

 

Parts of the edges crumble as the Detective takes it and the ink is peeling strangely in a few places but it’s better than you can say for a great number of pre-war artifacts. As his optics lock onto the faces in the photograph you can hear a startling click from some piece of machinery inside of him, a sound you know only happens when he’s been taken off-guard. 

 

“Yeah,  that’s them alright.” He responds softly, “I had, well I mean Nick had… we had a photograph just like this one. Sat on the desk in the office, ‘til we took it with us the day the bomb dropped.”

 

“Well, now you have one for the agency.” You prompt with a gentle smile, “We can probably scavenge a nicer frame from somewhere.”

 

Nick stays silent for a few moments before he nods in agreement. 

 

“I’d say that’s where it best belongs these days.” He responds, matching your expression before tucking it carefully into the shirt pocket on his breast. “Thanks kid. I really appreciate it, I do.”

 

The rest of the afternoon is spent in contented, bittersweet nostalgia as you both search and turn the house over, uncovering artifacts and the memories that are paired with them. In some areas you leave it looking worse than it was when you entered with cluttered objects left on top of dressers instead of back into their rotting drawers. In others you both tidy up a bit if only to move around the ruins easier. 

 

But as the sun sets and night encroaches, you feel the weight of impending time weighing on your shoulders. You know what you both truly came here to do, and the closer the moment comes where you have to enter the Vault again, the heavier it all feels. You wonder when exactly he expects you to lead him to the Vault, and what exactly he expects you to do when you get there. 

 

“Kid, I’m not expecting anything from you.” Is the Detective’s answer when you finally ask him, “This is your show to run, I’m just managing stage direction. It’s a decision you have to make for yourself. If you feel like you can’t, then don’t. We can always revisit things later after we’ve made more progress on the case.” He says, “Just because you tried to confront it before in Goodneighbor, don’t think that I expect you to charge into it again. Sometimes you’ll feel confident about dealing with it, other times it’ll have you lower than you’ve ever been. Trust me, I know.”

 

Slowly you feel the weight lift from your shoulders as you process your friend’s answer and you run your hands through Dogmeat’s fur as the German Shepherd lays out in front of you. The fire in the Lands’ fireplace finally starts to fill you with warmth, far more than you would have if you decided to camp outside rather than within the ruins of the house. You raise your hand as you feel a touch and you rest it over his as he clasps your shoulder reassuringly. 

 

“You’re doing just fine.”

 

Grateful, you lean against him and he puts a comforting arm around you, and you rest your head against him. The simple act of affection is comforting, enough that the warmth from the fire and the gentle hum of machinery in your ears lulls you to sleep. For the first time in what feels like a lifetime, you don’t suffer from insomnia, and neither do nightmares pierce the gentle darkness of sleep. 

 

 

* * *

 

  
  


The next morning consisted of rummaging through abandoned sheds for a shovel whose handle hadn’t rotted away. It was midday by the time both you and Nick had opened the earth deep enough into the soft dirt of your former back yard. Where it had made your muscles ache and sweat form at your brow, Nick displayed surprising strength and perseverance.  Just watching him you had felt the same hint of surprise the first time you had seen a raider run at him and he’d caught them by the front of their armor, lifted, and slammed them down into the ground in the same way that was common with Gen 2 Synths. Despite his outward presentation of an experienced Detective getting along in years, you couldn’t help but suspect that he was much more physically capable than he let on.

 

However, you wouldn’t allow him to do all of the work, feeling a sense of responsibility but thankful for the help that he offered. By the time it was done, you felt like more of a mess than usual- smattered with mud and sweat. You had felt the coolness of the dirt seeping out above the grave, and despite the solemnity that hung in the air you couldn’t help but to find the humor in trying to coax Dogmeat out when he’d decided that it was a comfortable place to try to stay and nap. At first the digging of the grave had been emotionally overwhelming, but now that it had been dug, you felt only relief from your fatigue rather than the overwhelming emptiness that you expected looking into the deep hole. However, you didn’t have to wait for long until it appeared. 

 

The Detective stands next to you as the platform into Vault 111 lowers into the deep passageway below. You had been here twice before, once shielding your eyes from the blinding blast of the atomic bomb, and the last when you had taken your first steps into what had become the Commonwealth. The sweat that had beaded on your forehead from earlier grew cold as a chill filled the air and only grew colder as you both descended into the Vault. With each few feet down, a growing emptiness leeches into your chest as if each exhale of cold fog is leaking your confidence away. 

 

The platform rests in place with a loud mechanical clunk and the gate before you both rattles up- miraculously still working. You stand there for a moment as the echoes fade, leaving a chilling silence in its wake as the cold settles around you and Nick. You take a deep, controlled breath to steel yourself, reaching up to rub the cold from your arms as you step forward and through the corridor ahead. You remember the way that the Vault-Tec scientists and workers had led you well, lying to you every step of the way.

 

“You really weren’t kidding when you said they’d had you frozen.” Nick says with a slight air of disbelief as his bright yellow optics rake the facility. “And they didn’t tell you a thing?”

 

“No, not a thing.” You answer before feeling the weight of Nick’s trenchcoat around your shoulders.

 

You give him a thankful nod and pull it around you, welcoming the extra protection against the cold despite the long settled smell of years of  cigarette smoke in the fabric. You lead him past the area where you had been given your Vault suit where some still rested within collapsed cardboard boxes. Ice coated patches of the floors here and there and you did your best to avoid them. The first cryogenics room feels like a looming, ominous shadow  of dread as you move past it with its floor coated in ice and the corpses that still look like they’re sleeping. They were once told that they were simply preparing for a safer life underground and they’d never be able to know how badly they’d been lied to.

 

But so many of them had been older, comfortable in their suburban lives, the shining examples of capitalistic society. You can’t help but wonder if this were the kinder way for them to go rather than to have them awake to the dangers and violence of the Commonwealth. You want to sigh, but you stay quiet as you stand there rubbing your arms for warmth. It feels like a mausoleum, a solemn place where these foreign sounds of life don’t belong. 

 

“My god…” Nick murmurs quietly, breaking the deep silence. “They did this?” He asks, taking off his hat in respectful observance. 

 

“Vault-Tec put them in there.” You answer, “It was Kellog and the Institute that killed them. They re-routed the power to my chamber and… and theirs.” You admit despite that speaking of your spouse makes your heart ache. “They made the choice that they should die so I could live.”

 

“It’s not your fault, you know.” Nick reassures as you look up to him, catching a look of concern in his brightly glowing optics. 

 

“I know.” You reply quietly, giving the room one last glance before moving on. “It doesn’t make it any easier though.”

 

The sound of your tapping feet create a disparate beat in accompaniment with Nick’s as both human and synth travel down the abandoned corridors. Thankfully, nothing deigned to bother either of you, no vermin to intercede your paths as you drew closer to your depressing goal. Here the floor is completely covered in ice and you are reminded vaguely of the science and travel magazines you used to see in the racks at convenience stores, of frozen caves and glaciers and the ancient organisms frozen inside. You feel as if this Vault is a man-made facsimile. 

 

You step carefully so as not to slip as you pass the rows and rows of frozen graves, a funeral procession consisting of those already dead, and you reach the end of the room. You glance at the pod that you had emerged from, now feeling like a very different person, and despite steeling yourself you still feel the wetness emerge from your eyes and spill down your cheeks when you turn around. 

 

Your spouse sits slumped inside the pod, their eyes closed and jaw slightly slack. Their cheeks still retain a hint of redness underneath the frost, frozen only a moment after their demise. Red, ruby-like crystals sprout from the side of their head like a natural formation of minerals, the gunshot wound being the perfect origin point for the blood to expand outward in the frozen temperature. Other smatterings of crystallized red spot the inside of the pod and for a moment you want to think that it’s almost poetic. Laid to rest in frozen crystals of diamond and rubies, but the sound of their voice arguing and the gunshot rings out in your ears. The only thing remotely poetic is the tragedy. 

 

You feel Nick’s presence next to you and you draw in a shuddering breath and wipe your eyes. He looks back at the empty, open pod behind them, and then back to your spouse as he mentally makes the connection and realizes how you had to see this happen. 

 

“I’m so sorry.” He says, his voice soft. 

 

You can only nod in response, because you can’t say that it’s ok. You reach forward to the release handle and the cryo-pod opens with a hiss. The ruby crystals begin to melt, but when you reach out to your spouse’s face it’s still cold to the touch, no life behind the skin to make it warmer than the cryo-pod’s reanimation processes can offer. You feel Nick nudge at your elbow and he reaches into the pocket of his trenchcoat around you, withdrawing a slightly stained rag before offering it with his mechanical hand. 

 

You take it with a small nod of appreciation, ignoring your own shuddering breathing as you carefully clean away the blood. Afterwards you toss the rag to the side and reach in, taking your loved one under their arms and removing them from the pod. You had hoped, maybe, that you would have the strength to carry them out on your own, both mentally and physically. But you can’t help to wrap your arms around your spouse in a last desperate hug. Later, both you and Nick carry them out by their shoulders and feet and you feel glad that you don’t have to do this alone. 

 

You lay them out on the cleanest sheet you were able to scavenge from the ruins of Sanctuary. Their arms are crossed over their chest, like some fallen warrior or ancient royalty. It is all you can really spare for them, you can’t think of anything to leave them with. They didn’t really need anything anymore. Nick is patient with you, letting you take the time you need to move forward. You reach out, holding your beloved’s hand one last time, reverently brushing your thumb against the back of their hand like you would when once upon a time you both settled into bed, your whole lives ahead of you. And with a gentle touch, you moved your hand away, sliding off the ring on their finger. The gold glints in the light as you turn it around in your hand and then pocket it safely. 

 

 

* * *

 

  
  


You take a deep breath as you wake, watching the floating motes of dust in the warm light from your vantage point on the Land’s floor. You feel better, in a way, no longer needing to cry for now at least. Dogmeat seems to sense as you wake because he lifts his head and looks in your direction with a jingle of his collar and he eagerly pads over. The German Shepherd is too big for his own good and you sputter as he unceremoniously presses his weight against you and you feel wet dog tongue slap across your cheek. 

 

“Dogmeat, down! Noooo.” You manage to protest halfheartedly.  

 

You manage to push him away, ignoring the slap of his tail as he wriggles around excitedly and jumps over to your other side before bolting out the door, ready to greet the day. You greet the day with much less enthusiasm as you sit up and rub your eyes. The skin around them stings a little from having rubbed them so much the night before. You look around, noting the Detective’s absence. With a little reluctance, you rise from your makeshift bed and leave the room to change clothes and don your armor. 

 

You spend the morning sitting on the grass next to the soft mound of dirt that marks your spouse’s grave, fiddling with their wedding ring and passing it between your fingers. Bright blue hubflowers lie in contrast to the reddened dirt, you didn’t put them there, but you can guess who did. They’re the same kind of flower that grows on the corner where Jenny was killed. You sigh and rub at your eyes and they feel heavy, but you can’t cry anymore, not for now at least. You know later something will hit you, but in truth it was an older wound now, you’d just only gotten around to finally dressing it. 

 

Footsteps crunching grass and leaves break your thoughts and you can smell the acrid tang of cigarette smoke that hangs from Nick’s trenchcoat. He doesn’t say anything, and you don’t need to turn and look to know how he stands quietly with his hands in his pockets. A sigh escapes your lips and you push yourself to your feet, not bothering to brush your pants clean. You’re far too used to being caked in sweat and dirt to mind at this point. 

 

“Ready to go?” You ask, looking to the older Synth. 

 

“Depends, are you?” He responds simply.

 

Something there in his battered face has a subtle nuance to it that you can’t quite describe. Although you can tell that he’s proud. He’s proud of you for being able to do this, and you let yourself feel a little accomplished at that. It’s a step forward. 

 

“There’s something I want to do first, if we’ve got the time.” You prompt, “Do you mind if we go inside?”


	10. Cold Turkey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's time for our duo to leave Sanctuary and head out once more, but not before closing one more case and fulfilling an old promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now introducing 'A Pack A Day' with 100% more canon compatibility! Everything has been edited so that it can exist in the universe without interfering with canon (too much~), including the vanilla game and Far Harbor. It's been a blast guys, and I might make this a series if motivation and time allows! I'd love to tell a few more stories for old Nicky, particularly raising Ellie, some (mis)adventures with a certain ghoul mayor, and maybe even meeting DiMA and getting some of those holes in his memory filled. 
> 
> It's been an awesome time sharing this with you all, and if you'd like to adopt this as your headcanon, feel free to do so! And as the Sole Survivor in this story, I hope you've enjoyed your adventures with our favorite Detective, I did my best to write you a good one! Thanks all!

As you step inside, your house feels more like a home than it had the first time you exited vault 111. Then it had felt like the immediate effect of disaster, the death and tragedy still fresh in the walls and floors. Now they  feel like the ruins they truly are, old and warmed by the years, not rotting, but standing firm like it had been waiting. The floor is swept clear, the counters in an equally tidy state, but they aren’t truly clean despite Codsworth’s efforts. You can’t clean away age with a broom. 

 

Your former home is in a similar state in comparison to the Land’s house. The couch in the living room looks like it belongs in a dump, the rugs are ragged and partially eaten away, and the holotape player and the casing has collapsed in on itself. The appliances in the kitchen are the most similar to how they used to be, but the rust and the chipping of enamel are reminders that they are no longer new and out of the box. 

 

“Welcome home.” You say, partially to yourself and partially to Nick as he enters the house, leaving Codsworth to take care of the yard to give you both some space. “It looks great, doesn’t it?!” You comment a little more loudly than necessary.

 

It’s a lie, but you want Codsworth to hear and maybe it would make all of his work worth it to him. Nick chuckles at that and wanders to your side.

 

“It is certainly a place.” He agrees, “How’d a couple of newlyweds afford a place like this?”

 

“Well, we weren’t exactly unfamiliar with the military.’ You admit, motioning to the folded flag on the shelf next to the door. “It helped us get into Vault 111, not that did a lot of good for us.”

 

“You’re still here.” Nick pointed out, “I’d say that’s more than what we’d have otherwise.”

 

“I guess I won’t complain about that part.” You agree, grabbing an abandoned comic book from the kitchen counter. “Grognak the Barbarian. They wanted to get Shaun into comic books early.” You say with a quiet breath of a laugh. “Didn’t want to spend so much money on baby books when we already had so many of these.”

 

“Yours too, huh?” Nick laughed, “Yeah… Jenny was into the whole _Silver Shroud_ comic junk. Always waiting on the damn TV show to come out. It wasn’t enough that she was engaged to a real life Detective, it was still too boring compared to the books.”

 

You smile a little at that and put the book into your bag. Maybe finally you’d give them a read. Until then, you continued to wander the ruins of your home, touring Nick around much like he did for you when he showed you the Lands’ house. It is the little things that draw up memories while you explore the ruins of the house. The way the light comes through the clouded windows, the dishes still stacked carefully in the cabinets despite the missing doors, and the way that sound travels through the rooms when you speak. 

 

You talk about your spouse, your family, the job you once had and what brought you joy and you cry over the memories and sometimes the cries turn to laughs when you remember some of the good old days. All the while turning over what was left of your home looking for anything that could prove useful to the both of you with the destination of the Glowing Sea looming in the distance. 

 

Finally, you reach what you are looking for. Under the dessicated mattress and the collapsed bed frame in your former room you drag out a hefty footlocker, a remnant of a tour of service. It is soon relocated to the living room so you can see by the light of the windows that Nick absentmindedly stares out of as you attempt to pick the lock, your eyes are red but at least content once more from crying. 

 

“I still can’t believe it though.” You say, making idle conversation as another pick snaps in the lock. “That until now we never even crossed paths. We can see the Land’s house from here. How many times did we even see your car in the driveway?” You wonder aloud as you clear out the pieces of broken pick and try again. “It’s a little frustrating in a weird way.”

 

“You’re still thinking about that?” Nick asked, giving you a look of amusement. “I don’t think it matters, to be quite honest. Besides, I think it’s pretty nifty knowing we were that close to begin with.”

 

“  _ Nifty? _ ” You tease, giving the detective a look before the snap of yet another lockpick. “Damn.”

 

“You don’t have a key for that thing?”

 

“Not on me.” You admit. “I looked through what was left of the drawers and couldn’t find one. There were two, originally. We shared it.”

 

“You and your spouse?” 

 

“Yeah.” You affirm with a nod, “We had all sorts of things in here that could come in handy. Some medical supplies, bottled water, cans of food, a pistol and ammo, I can’t remember everything but if it’s all still in here then we could use it.” You explain, “Somewhere along the way we also just started putting in keepsakes. I guess if something ever happened we always planned to bring it along with us, but when the bombs dropped there just wasn’t time. The key that might still be here should be on a set of dog tags.”

 

You sigh and stand up, looking around the room for a glint of metal that wasn’t in Nick’s general vicinity. You’d hate to have to break the locker and pry it open, especially if there are things you need to leave and keep safe for later. 

 

“You check the bathroom?” Nick suggested, already thinking of possible areas it might be.

 

“Yeah, and the cabinet in the mirror.” You grumble, “Looked through the dresser, under what’s left of the bed, on the nightstand-”

 

“Did you do laundry before things went to hell? It could be in the washing machine or dryer,” He guesses, “Assuming it’s been left alone for the past couple hundred years.”

 

You click your tongue at him and point before turning on your heels, appreciative that your best friend in the apocalypse is a detective as you make your way to the laundry room. You assume it’s safe to say that no one has really bothered it considering that Codsworth’s box is still there in the corner, spare parts and all. You open the top of the washing machine and give it a spin, listening for a rattle of something inside. However, little more than the rusted pieces that had fallen off in time littered the bottom. With a sigh, you move onto the dryer and the rattle and clink of something much lighter reaches your ears. 

 

Reaching inside, your fingertips brush the pocked metal before running over something smoother. You take it into the palm of your hand and turn the dog tags and partially rusted chain around in your hands, finding the key fastened there with them. You can’t help but to breathe out a sigh of relief. The chain wraps around your wrist as you twirl it around and return to the living room victorious. 

 

“There we go.” Nick comments with a  low whistle and a smile, “Open ‘er up then.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

The foot locker opens with a satisfying click and the hinges creak in protest as  the lid is raised for the first time in two centuries. You have to push Dogmeat out of the way a bit when he blocks your way by shoving his head in and sniffing curiously. In one end is a stack of empty water bottles- you had to guess that after so long the water must have evaporated through the plastic. Sealed military style rations, dry and left to be rehydrated joined them. You pick up a package and turn it around- the expiration date was off by decades, but so was every box of Sugar Bombs and Cram that you came across and ate anyway. You suppose you’d just have to give them a try, being picky in the apocalypse wasn’t really an option when you looked for all avenues of survival. 

 

Accompanying this, you find a medical kit, some Radaway, Rad-X, and Stimpacks that come as a welcome relief. Those would definitely help with your journey into the Glowing Sea. Rifling through the locker, your hand bumps against something heavy and you realize that you’ve found the pistol that had been stored inside. Portions of it are rusted over, and you already have a gun that had served you well thus far. You suppose that it would just be better off to sell it or give it to Sturges in the hopes that he might be able to fix it up and give it to someone in the settlement who can use it. The ammo though, is still in good condition and as precious of a commodity that it is out here, you store it with the rest of the supplies you plan to keep. 

 

But even as you sort through the forgotten contents of the locker, ridding it of every useful item you can manage to find, you continue to go through it. You find things that don’t matter anymore, at least, not to anyone outside of yourself -- birth certificates, social security cards, extra invitations from your wedding, and as you reach in to pull out a stack of folders something slides out from your grip and flutters to the floor. The glossy surface glints in the sunlight from the window before it lands on the aged and cracked floor at your companions’ feet. His trenchcoat rustles as he leans forward, one hand on top of his hat to keep it from falling from his head and his metal fingers close around the edge of the photograph. 

 

“Well I’ll be.” He says, straightening with a slight grunt as he turns it over to examine it, “Can’t say I’ve seen a photograph that’s in as good a condition as this one in a long time.” The Detective comments as he offers it to you. “This one’s special.” He adds, a new softness to his voice. “You oughta keep it safe.”

 

The photograph exchanges hands and you let out a sigh as you turn it over. It’s the first family photo you had taken after Shaun had been born. Your parents were there, your spouse, their parents as well all gathered in the living room with Shaun in your arms back when things were still new and you had no idea what was coming. Thankfully, you can’t quite feel sad about it at the moment. You’re just glad that you have something where you can see their faces. You’d worried about the thought of forgetting them one day.

 

“I will.” You assure the Detective, “Hard to think that I could have counted the number of weeks on my hands until the bomb dropped.”

 

“Things always do seem stranger in retrospect.” He agrees with a nod.

 

“I think I know where this came from though.” You say as you shuffle through the folders in your hand, placing them aside until you’d proven your suspicions. 

 

The item left in your hand was a soft, thin, cloth covered photo album. Even as safe as it had been kept, it had lost the plushness that it once held and you could feel the age in its texture. You had gotten it as a wedding present and both you and your spouse both had been adding to it, building memories together. You ran your fingers over the cover and opened it hesitantly before letting it close again. You weren’t ready to get emotional again and you deserved a break from your grief, at least for a little while. 

 

“This’ll give us something to do while we walk.” You insist, feeling Nick’s curious gaze, “Besides, I think we’ve spent a little too long here. We should head back to Diamond City, stock up, and get to the Glowing Sea. My boy is out there waiting somewhere for me.”

 

The Synth agrees with a nod, the hint of an undaunted smile playing at his worn lips. “I’ve gotta tell ya, partner. If this kid has as much grit and determination as you I’m going to look forward to meeting him.”

 

“I do too.” You admit, safely tucking the photo album away in your satchel as you lead the way out of the house, Dogmeat rushing on ahead into the sunlight. “And I especially look forward to meeting whoever it is that thought it was a good idea to take him in the first place.”

 

“Well, you’ve helped me put my demons to bed.” Nick replies with a slight tilt of his head, adjusting his lapels to cover the holes in his neck a little more against the breeze as you both make your way back through Sanctuary. “It’s only right that I help return the favor.”

 

You take a slight detour before you leave the small settlement, saying your goodbyes to Preston and Sturges. You part with whatever supplies you can manage, knowing that any junk would only weigh you down at this point. You’d seen what radiation did to the Commonwealth and you weren’t entirely sure that you were ready to see what happened in an incredibly high area of radioactivity that continued to this day. If there were two headed cows and deer out here, giant cockroaches, and deathclaws of all things you had no idea what terror awaited in that swath of green fog and lightning. Your only consolation was that if anything went wrong, you were damned sure at this point that Nick would be able to bail you out.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Once again, the silence had fallen as you and the Detective strode along, side by side across the cracked pavement. You’d managed to entertain the old codger for a bit, mostly when you tried to convince him that you had, in fact, killed a Deathclaw during your first day out of the vault. Granted, it was because you’d gotten an outdated suit of power armor working enough to stop it from tearing you limb from limb. But by the end of it, you weren’t quite sure if he believed you, or if he was just humoring you because he thought you were telling some tall tales for the fun of it. Especially when all he’d respond with was an ‘If you say so’ and an amused smirk. 

 

And so you both had been traveling in the relative silence, listening to the sound of the wind in the trees and the rustle of paper as stray waste floated with the breeze across the asphalt like tumbleweeds. The silence was nice, but you still can’t help but want something to fill it. It’s not because you dislike it, but the alternative of conversing with the Detective was far preferable. You realize that you’d come to greatly enjoy your interactions and in all honesty it was one of your favorite things these days when the situation allowed it. Even when you took some days off to recover in Diamond city, you always find yourself retreating back to the Detective Agency despite the acrid cringe of cigarette smoke that clouds the air more often than not. You wonder if maybe Ellie is thankful for keeping him out and about these days if it helps her to breathe easier. 

 

“Oh, right-” You say, finally remembering something that could become a point of conversation, “-I almost forgot about this.”

 

Reaching into your satchel, you retrieve the loose photograph that had fallen from the album that is now in your hands. You realize as you open it and flip through the pages that it’s much emptier than you’d initially remembered. So many of the photos and memories stored inside seemed so much more than just what had been captured in the picture. 

 

“Well now, would you look at that.” Nick comments, walking a little closer to peer at the album, “I feel like I’d almost forgotten what things actually looked like back then.”

 

“Yeah?” You ask, flipping the page, finding a picture of you and your spouse next to the first car you had gotten together. “When was the last time you saw one of those that wasn’t rusted all to hell and back?” 

 

“Too long ago if you ask me.” He scoffs, “It might not be one of those high-end models but what I wouldn’t give to drive something again.”

 

“We could always try to replicate Randal’s motorbike trick if you miss it that much.” You tease, turning the page again to find the empty spot where your missing photograph needs to go. 

 

“In that case, nevermind.” Nick says, rolling his eyes with a shake of his head, “If it didn’t kill me, it’d take a damn good reason to get me to do that again. These parts aren’t as new as they used to be.”

 

“Ahah, found it.” You announce, sliding the loose photograph into the plastic sleeve that it had fallen out of. “I should have started back here. We didn’t have many pictures of Shaun yet. Not that we didn’t take any, we had rolls and rolls of film back home filled with pictures. We just didn’t get to get them developed before the bomb dropped.” 

 

“Cute kid though.” The Detective comments quietly, his yellow optics roaming the pages to take in a list of Shaun’s firsts. His first night at home, his first time meeting Codsworth, his first bath, his first haircut, and now you realize just how many ‘firsts’ you’ve missed.

 

“He is.” You reply somberly, “He doesn’t look like that anymore though. When they took him I didn’t realize how long I was frozen the second time. He’s got to be around 10 now if I had to guess, just from what I saw in Kellogg’s memories.”

 

There’s another period of silence again as you focus on the pictures in front of you, flipping through the few pages you have of Shaun, trying to imagine how the tiny baby had grown into a boy and trying to imagine how he looked in-between. 

 

“We’ll find him soon.” Nick vows quietly, “I know you’re probably going to always think about those missing years you didn’t get, but I promise there’s plenty more you’re going to have with him. Good ones too.” He assures, giving your shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Ellie was about his age when I took her in, she was an orphan though, grew up in Goodneighbor and hated my guts if you can believe it.” He says with a shake of his head, “Couldn’t stand me, especially when her parents were killed by Synths, but no one else could spare the caps to look after her so they sent her my way.” He recounts, “And hell, if she’s as much a family as she is to me now, I can already tell it’s going to be a lot easier for you and Shaun.”

 

“We can only hope.” You sigh, turning to the last page with anything on it. “But you’re right. And the sooner we bring him home, the sooner we can be a family again.”

 

Out of your peripheral vision you see Nick nod in approval, but you’re busy looking at the final photograph in the album. It’s of you and Shaun, sitting in the grass in your front yard at the start of October, almost three weeks before everything fell apart. You’d just finished carving a pumpkin to display near the driveway and sat it between your legs while you balanced little Shaun to sit on top of it. He was bundled up like a bug in a rug. Your spouse had been the one behind the camera to take the picture and it ended up being a good one. It’s difficult for you to believe that your idyllic life is over, not because the wasteland isn’t convincing enough, but because it had been such a drastic change in such little time.

 

“So kid… remember when you were asking about if we ever met?” Nick recalls, strangely unprompted. 

 

“Yup, I thought we closed that case?” You say, giving him a curious look, “Why do you ask?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

_ “I’ll be back in a few minutes Mr. and Mrs. Lands, just going to take a walk down to the bridge and back for a smoke.” Officer Valentine assured, already feeling short of breath just thinking about it.  _

 

_ Nick let out a series of low coughs as he grabbed his jacket and hat from the rack near the front door of the Lands’ abode, shrugging the comfortably heavy trenchcoat onto his shoulders.  Right on cue he heard a series of footsteps approach from behind him that stopped a short distance away for him to turn around.  _

 

_ Mrs. Lands was the spitting image of the doting mother in a Rockwell illustration, prim and proper but also the softest and most caring woman you’d ever meet. You’d think twice though if you let her looks fool you, despite her quiet cozy living in Sanctuary, the woman was a firecracker with a lifetime of military service up until Jenny had been killed. From what he’d heard, she’d been a hell of a drill sergeant. And while not quite going back to her glory days, her voice had a certain commanding tone in it that highlighted the gentle concern in which she delivered her thoughts.  _

 

_ “Nicky, I’m not sure you should be going out if all you’re going to do is smoke.” She sighed, her hands on her hips, “And you should know by now that I’m still your mother-in-law, or at least good enough, that hasn’t changed.” _

 

_ “Yes, I know, I’m sorry Ma.” Nick said, dropping his head a bit as he conceded, “I just know that Mr. Lands is a stickler for formality is all, always has been.” _

 

_ “And that’s why you call him Mr. Lands... but  _ just _ him.” She reminded him with a smile. “That still doesn’t address my first statement though.” _

 

_ “I know, I know…” The officer sighed and patted his pockets to make sure everything was there. Stifling his coughs with one hand as he did so. “I’ve got a doctor’s appointment coming up in a few weeks. They decided to put me on the waitlist for some fancy scanner at the CIT since it’s bad enough that they need a better look at the old airbags.” He assured, “But until then I’m going to just work down how much I smoke until I go Cold Turkey. Once it’s been treated I’ll stop for good. Promise.” _

 

_ “Alright, so long as you’re going to start taking care of yourself.” Mrs. Lands said, fussing a bit with straightening the collar of his shirt for him. “You’re lucky you’ve got an angel looking after you, otherwise I’m not sure you would have lasted this long. We might have to start taking care of you and not the other way around.”  _

 

_ “Yeah, well… she is quite an angel.” Nick admitted quietly, looking up at one of the many portraits of Jenny that adorned the small home. “Don’t you worry Ma, or Jen-’ he added, nodding towards the portrait, “-I’ll be fine.” _

 

_ “Oh, I know she’ll be sure you are.” Mrs. Lands tutted, done with her fussing over his appearance. “I’ll have some hot coffee ready for you when you get back, it’s chilly out today.” She warned, leaning up to him and giving him a peck on the cheek. “And don’t forget to leave your coat in your car when you get back, you know how your Father in law is about the smell once you’ve been smoking.” _

 

_ “Thanks Ma, you’re the best.” He thanked with a nod, “And I’ll remember, no problem. I’ll be back soon, don’t worry about it.” _

 

_ Nick took a breath of fresh air as he stepped past the threshold of the Lands’ home, passing his car in the driveway as he started down the sidewalk towards the bridge. He soon realized that Mrs. Lands hadn’t been joking when she’d said it was chilly out today. He coughed as he withdrew his pack of cigarettes and his lighter, warming his hands as he fought to light the end against the breeze by shielding it. Finally the end lit and he was greeted by the familiar sight of the bright orange glow at the end of the cigarette between his lips.  _

 

_ He sighed in relief as he took a few puffs, listening to the quiet crackle as the flame burned through it and he exhaled a cloud of smoke. He felt a lot better now with one hand in his pocket and the other holding a cigarette. He enjoyed these smoke breaks at the Lands’ mostly because when he smoked on his own time it was when he was at work and there wasn’t anything really relaxing about it. Here though, it was nice to slow down, take a walk, and preserve those little moments to memory.  _

 

_ He smiled as he passed by a set of rather meticulously trimmed hedges, spotting a small family in the front yard of another home. One individual  was sitting on the damp grass, holding a little bundle of clothes that he was sure had to have a baby in it somewhere. He could smell the scent of freshly carved pumpkins and glanced up as another person exited the front door of the house. He couldn’t really remember seeing them around before, but he didn’t spend too much time in Sanctuary to get to know everyone. But if he had to guess, just judging by the baby that one held in their arms, they’d moved in recently to start a family.  _

 

_ Nick was lost in thought by the time one of the couple knelt down and the flash of a camera went off, jolting him out of his reverie. Suddenly, he realized he’d probably been standing there too long and self-consciously hoped that he hadn’t ruined the picture by being in the background. He gave an apologetic wave to the person behind the camera, who only responded with a smile and a nod of their head.  _

 

_ It’s fine. _

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“That’s  _ you?  _ That’s you.” You say partially to Nick, and partially to convince yourself even though the evidence was right in front of your face. “Oh my god.”

 

“Yeah, that’s me alright.” The Detective admits, reaching up under his hat to scratch the top of his head, “Before everything that led up to this. I’ve gotta say kid, you can really have one hell of a hunch.”

 

“It wasn’t even a hunch!” You respond, incredulous as you slide the photograph out of its sleeve and put the rest of the book away. “It was me spouting bullshit into the air trying to make conversation! Nick, look at this! You look just like you did when I saw you in the Memory Lounger!” You turn dramatically to the Synth, eyes wide as you gasp. “ _ You had  _ **_hair!_ ** _ ” _

 

If you weren’t positive that Nick’s optics were firmly in their sockets, you’re sure that they would have rolled out of the back of his head with the look he gives you.

 

“You know, I’m starting to maybe rethink this whole  _ ‘partnership’ _ thing.” He says teasingly before he cuts himself off with a grunt when you throw an arm around his waist and pin his arms to his side, and pull him into a rough side-hug so you both can see the photograph more easily.

 

“We need to hang this up in the Agency. Wait until Ellie sees this!” You decide excitedly, “We can hang this one up with a picture of Ellie too, like a family portrait.” You insist. “I mean just… wow!  _ Wow!  _ I don’t know why this is cool, but it’s  _ really _ cool.”

 

“Kinda puts thing in perspective in a way, doesn’t it?” The Detective suggests, adjusting the front of his coat as he retreats back into his normal pace beside you. “Makes the world seem a little less big. Or maybe because it’s so big, that things like this seem like miracles when they happen.”

 

“Yeah,” You say, “They kind of do.”

 

And you can’t help but to shake the feeling that maybe now you know each other a bit better.

You continue to smile for the next few hours, feeling the shape of the photograph in your pocket. You don’t know why this feels like such a victory, but for some reason it does. Or, at least evidence of one. That somehow, despite all odds, in one form or another, you’d both ended up in the same place and the same time more than once but so drastically far apart. That despite everything, you’d both made it and hadn’t lost sight of yourselves. It was all one crapshoot of a lottery to end up at this point and somehow you’d made it there together. 

 

“You know, Nicky…” You mention aloud as the sun starts to settle into the distance behind you, listening to the sound of the pavement underneath your feet, “I don’t think I’ve ever told you how thankful I am that you’re here.” You say, casting him a smile. 

 

The Detective smirks and glances your way, a sly look in his optics, “Are you trying to butter me up or something?” He asks, a hint of mirth in his voice, “If you want to hear more stories, you can just say so. Or did that picture just put you in that good of a mood?”

 

“No, no, it’s not that.” You insist, hefting your satchel up a little more. “I mean honestly Nick, I don’t know where I’d be if things hadn’t happened like they did.” You explain, “I’m not sure how far I wouldn’t gotten without you so-”

 

Your ‘thanks’ pauses in your throat as you feel the detective cuff your shoulder, pulling you into his side for a moment as he pats your back. You grin because you realize just how much you missed  having this level of comfort with another person. You can’t quite help but to wonder the last time Nick had anyone like that either, besides Ellie. But when you spend half your time pulling each other out of the fire, it's hard not to have that kind of connection.

 

“Ain’t no need to thank me.” He insists, letting you go, “To be honest, I could say the same thing about you and it’d still be one hundred percent true.” The Detective points out, reaching into his coat pocket for his pack of cigarettes. “A little give and take goes a long, long way to getting some weight off your shoulders.”

 

You nod in agreement, starting to feel a little hint  of relief after recent events. More than just your spouse had been put to rest, it seems. However, you can’t help but to notice how the Detective glances down as you hear the rustle of paper in his pocket and he removes the picture of Jenny and her family. He takes a cigarette out of the package and it’s hard to read his expression. His optics linger from person to person, only a few seconds each before he returns the contents of his pockets back to their rightful place. 

 

“So you’re saying there’s a little less weight you’re dragging around then?” You inquire, watching him raise the cigarette to his lips, wondering about what might be going through his head right now. 

 

“A little less is an understatement.” The Synth replies with a sideways glance and a crooked beam, “Trust me kid, I’ve never felt lighter.” He sighs, his optics clicking up towards the horizon. “You know, we’ve got a ways to walk yet. If we’re not going to chatter you might as well put on your radio.”

 

“Sure thing.” Is your answer as you lift up your Pipboy and start shuffling through the settings. “I thought that was your gig though, whatever happened to those holotapes? The ones that you and Jim collected? Your player broken?”

 

Nick snorts and stifles a chuckle, “Nah, the old player still works just as fine as it always did. If you remember right, I used it to get the info off the tapes to track down Eddie.” He points out, tapping the brim of his hat and reminding you to use your head. “But as for the holotapes, Diamond City Radio didn’t get their music selection from nowhere. Figured I’d share them and if I wanted to hear something, it’d come on eventually.”

 

The tired smirk that comes across your face is natural as you finally manage to tune into Diamond City Radio. The volume grows as you twist the knob on the Pipboy, letting Bob Crosby’s crooning voice  fill the space as you both trundle along, content in each other’s company despite the looming challenges ahead. You glance up at Nick and wonder just how much effort it would be to get a camera working again, after all, there are still plenty of pages to fill in your old album. But as you focus back on the road ahead of you, you can’t help to think it a little strange.

 

That old cop never lit his cigarette. 

  
  


_ ~The love the liveliest _

 

_ The life the loveliest _

 

_ Way back _

 

_ Way back _

 

_ Way back home _

 

_ There’s no place like home _

 

_ Sweet _

 

_ Home~ _

**Author's Note:**

> Long story short- I love Fallout 4 and this robot man deserves happiness and I need to release my feelings about this poor toaster. Please follow me on tumblr at TheGhostlyMuse! I'm an artist and writer working on an original webcomic series.


End file.
